Ian McMillan Surreal-Absurd Sampler
ME AND SURREALISM AND ME
I can more or less remember when I first tried to be surrealistically creative: it was on a church youth club trip to London in around 1969 when I was 13. On the way home my mates and I were spectacularly bored on the rattling bus and I said, apropos of nothing, that when I got home I was going wash my hands in a bowl made from old leather cucumbers when I got home. That collision of leather and cucumbers got a laugh and a surreal door was opened in my mind.
Of course at that time I would have been watching TV programmes like Monty Python’s Flying Circus and some of the more experimental comedy of Spike Milligan. I was reading the Pan books of Horror Stories and some unusual science fiction and I was listening to music, via John Peel, by people like Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart and Soft Machine. All of this was feeding my off-kilter linguistic imagination.
A few years later I encountered surrealist art, again via the TV, and I bought The Penguin Book of Surrealist Poetry which introduced me to people like David Gascoine and Roger Roughton and Bravig Imbs. And I began to write poems that edged towards the surreal because I was interested (although I probably didn’t articulate it like this at the time) in language that stretched the reader at the same time as making them smile. These days I’ve moved a little away from surrealism in my writing, but it’s always there waving at me, trying to tempt me back.
So here are some of my early surrealist poems. I hope they’re surreal enough; I hope they as good as a bowl of leather cucumbers. Stirred by a rusty euphonium, of course.
— Ian McMillan, 2024.
Poem Badly Translated from the Language
Tell me why you have died and when
in not more than ten words.
How many pains can dance
on the head of an angel?
How many angels can dance
on the head of a man?
How tedious your nightmares are.
How commonplace your visions.
The future is a hailstone with a fish in it.
The past is a fish beside a broken hailstone.
The Blues is the ancient Chinese art
of folding paper until it cries.
The coffee-bar mode is not enough;
1959 is an aspect of a face
viewed from a subway. The far
mask of the Moon is always turned
from us but we are aware of the smell.
Revive the old native insult:
Point at me with one of your eyes
and I shall slip into the tight neck of Hell.
Note: Little is known of the author of this poem. His only other known work is a single
line, barely translatable, which could be rendered as "Songs, built like temporary
shelters, contain music and words."
The Story So Far
FRANK, an eccentric surrealist millionaire,
is in mourning for his surrealist wife WENDY
who has just died. JESUS, an eccentric
surrealist millionaire, has brought her back
from the dead, but has not told FRANK.
FRANK, meanwhile, has sold all his eccentric
surrealist companies and has rented a cockle
boat in COLWYN BAY. He meets WANDA, the daughter
of WILL SHAKESPEARE, a surrealist eccentric.
SURREALIST, the cockle boat, sinks in the
purple and red bay during a surrealist
storm of table-legs and 'cellos. Eccentric
surrealist FRANK discovers his wife WENDY
walking about at the bottom of the sea
in a diving suit. JESUS, in an eccentric
surrealist fashion, has put her there.
FRANK is amazed to find WENDY still
alive; but what will he tell WANDA?
Now read on.
Tetchy Improvisation on Early Eighteenth-Century
Film Criticism
‘This new medium is merely an excuse for Death' (Anonymous film critic, 1726)
The death of the excuse!
It all an excuse for Death, all this talking;
If the sloppy King of Kings
hadn't felt the rain on his head then there wouldn't be the need
for all this talking.
I blame the slovenly King of Kings, myself.
These damned silly sunsets!
Damn' red wig slipping, if you ask me;
the scruffy King of the World
burping and hiccupping
on the World's knee.
All an excuse for Death!
Usherette like a moon in November,
seats like a forest of seats.
À feeble excuse, too. I prefer Death.
On this shore, here, f’r instance: waves
pounding out a point like a wet-nurse slapping
a dying King-baby with a breast. (Storm!)
It's all, in all, an excuse.
I came in out of the rain.
I sat in the dark and blinked.
It's all, all in all, an excuse.
You know how I mean. This
this darkness this music
and this movement this
this excuse. For Death.
Death, the only coach!
On the only road!
Until now.
We’re Doing the Quick Crossword
Slowly. Violent disorder. Riot,
Ruckus, rampage. Outside,
A slow motorcycle slows,
Stops. I've got summat O
Summat summat, T,
Summat. My brow
Wrinkles until it looks older
Than almost every other
Part of me. Violent disorder.
Summat O, summat summat
T, summat. How difficult
Can language be? The motorbike
Accelerates away, slowly.
Of course we're both
Looking at different clues,
Of course we are. Silence
Hangs in the evening waiting
For the motorbike. Ruckus.
Figs
He leans over to pick up the
Figs. I lean over to pick
Up the figs. You lean over
To pick up the figs. And Him,
Me, and You are the same man,
The same fingers lean
Ing over to pick up the figs.
At different cupboards
Of our lives, we’re an I, a He
Language and Politics
... the illusion that language consists of things called words. - David Bellos
So when Terry (pate gleam) from Speke
Says is she angry, la?' he's really saying Shangri La.
It's a drive by shouting. Listen: Mock-Gloucs,
Faux-Northants, Somerset-lite, Half-i-shire chat.
And when I'm lost and late in a rush to a West Mids
Station and I'm asking despairing directions
The man in the scarf really does tell me to turn left
At Toys Yam We. Okay, another tack: Alan and Marilyn
Bergman, lyricists, describe a line with too many S's in
As a basket of snakes. So when Cyril (wellies, vest)
sings the wrong words of one of their great songs
He goes Memories/misty waters flowing slowly/
Though the canyons of my mind is he still singing
The Way We Were? Okay, another tack: on the radio
The man describing the Udinese-Arsenal match
Shouts This is a terrifically open watch! Okay, another
Tack: a man in a music shop says to his mate, who is
Carrying an umbrella even though it's a sunny day,
There's a huge amount of sound inside that piano.
All this tacking: my little language-yacht must be
In choppy choppy waters! My flowery language-carpet
Must be very loose to need all this hammering down!
So maybe we should leave it to the professionals. They
Know how talk should be talkytalked. 'I have made it
Very clear..'Heck fire! He even sounds like a Prime Minister!
Q: what has he made clear? A: the window. The view is now
Sensational. Depending of course where you are standing.
Sonny Boy Williamson is Trying to Cook a Rabbit in a Kettle
Ingredients
1. Rabbit
2. Water
Method
1. Attempt to get lid off kettle.
2. Attempt to get lid off kettle.
3. Attempt to put rabbit in kettle.
4. Use harmonica to squeeze rabbit in kettle
5. Switch kettle on.
6. Settle down to watch My Friend Flicka on huge black and white 1960s hotel TV.
7. Inspect kettle.
8. Trouser press switched on by mistake.
9. Switch kettle on.
10. Settle down to watch My Mother on the Car on huge black and white 1960s hotel
TV.
11. Smell burning.
12. Hit top of TV with harmonica.
13. Smell burning.
14. Attempt to put burning kettle out with small plastic 1960s containers of plastic
milk.
15. Run from the room shouting I TRIED TO COOK A RABBIT IN A KETTLE
BUT THE KETTLE CAUGHT FIRE.
16. Realise that’s a catchy tune.
17. Sing it: I TRIED TO COOK A RABBIT IN A KETTLE BUT THE KETTLE
CAUGHT ON FIRE.
These poems are from Selected Poems (Carcanet 1987) or To Fold the Evening Star (Carcanet 2016).
Ian McMillan is a poet, journalist, playwright, and broadcaster. He has six collections of poetry with Carcanet and is presenter of The Verb, Radio 3’s Cabaret of The Word. He has written comedy for radio (Radios 1,2,3,4 and Five Live as well as for Yorkshire Television and BBC2’s Newsnight Review) and plays for the stage and has been poet in residence at Barnsley Football Club. In 2010, McMillan was the castaway on the legendary BBC Radio 4 show Desert Island Discs. His choice of music included John Cage’s silent piece “4’33” and Andy Stewart singing “Donald Where’s Your Troosers?”
