Ian Seed Surreal-Absurd Sampler

“I am as much influenced, I think, at an unconscious level, by 1960s TV series that I watched as a child, such as The Avengers, as I am by any absurdist surrealist author or artist. One of the Avengers programmes, like the prose poem below, was called ‘The House that Jack Built’. The absurd-surreal is a form of realism, and, in my case, a confession by other means. My poem-stories seek to unsettle, to entertain, and to move. They revisit memory through dream, imagination and, on occasion, collage. They are as full of yearning as they are of irony. I want you to believe in them.”

—Ian Seed

In the Empty House

We found what looked like a piece of light, unmoving, frozen in the shape of a human being. We were afraid to touch it – it looked cold enough to burn us. What would happen if we could unfreeze it? Would it melt and vanish, or would it keep its shape and come alive? Could we take it away with us? Would it make any difference to how we lived, or loved, one way or another?

Need

My wife was flipping through a magazine when I got into bed. Under the sheets, I felt something warm and furry between us. At first I thought it was our cat, but as I explored with my fingertips, it gave me a sharp nip. I pulled back the duvet. A tiny puppy.
How did that get here? I asked.
My wife shrugged and went back to her reading.
Then I heard a soft whining from under the bed. A dog’s head emerged. Its long ears looked as if they’d recently been chewed. By what? I wondered.
Then I felt something large pushing up against me from below. I jumped out of bed and peered underneath. A middle-aged woman in a torn coat was lying there. She had tears on her cheeks. I wanted to know what had happened, but instead of asking her, I told her to leave or I’d call the police.
My wife turned over another page of her magazine, with only the briefest of glances in my direction.

Missing

I found the creature – a kind of horse dressed like a doll with her ears sticking out on either side of a bonnet, wearing rimless spectacles like an old granny, and talking to herself like a small child – walking on her back legs down the main thoroughfare of the great city. She was evidently quite lost. I put my arm around her waist – soft and furry like a teddy bear’s – and led her home with me.
My wife wouldn’t let me keep her, so I put an announcement in the local paper. A man from the other side of the city came to claim her. Something about him made me uneasy, and I followed him as he led the talking horse onto a tram and down through the rows to the back seat.
The horse was chattering away to herself quite happily and didn’t seem to care whether I was there or not, so after giving her a last hug and saying goodbye once again, I got off the tram.
The tram-stop was in the middle of a dual-carriageway and the traffic swarmed by on either side. I realised I didn’t have a clue where I was, and had no idea how to get back home.

Interview with a Priest

His words were changing into a language I couldn’t comprehend. At the same time, the hairs on his knuckles were growing into spikes. My stomach felt tender as a crocodile’s, as if my falling on the spikes were inevitable.

A Man of Some Influence

I was meditating on the bed in a shoulder-stand position, the backs of my heels against floral wallpaper, my head, neck, shoulders and elbows on the pillow, my hands supporting my hips. A man in a tweed suit dashed into the room. He had a bald head and a beard like Lenin’s, but his expression was mild and English. ‘Oscar needs your help,’ he said. By this he meant that Oscar Wilde, a good friend of mine, had been taken to court and needed me to testify on his behalf. I realised at that moment that I couldn’t go, for my forehead had begun to swell drastically like a balloon. Instead of replying, I took my hands away from my hips, and, not without some sense of final satisfaction, began gently stroking and pressing the swelling with the tips of my fingers.

Betrayal

Lost in the wet mist, I met a hermit who led me to his hut. The hut was bare, just two stone benches. He wanted me to lie down and sleep, though I hadn’t eaten all day. ‘Tomorrow we shall find food,’ he promised, and held my hand to comfort me. I dreamt of crows flying, blood dripping like rain from their beaks. When I awoke, there was a hole in my throat, into which I was able to insert a finger.

The House that Jack Built

I entered the museum that contained the house that Jack built. The original purpose of the house had been to keep everyone out, and I thought that the game would be to find the secret door. I found instead a house without walls. A man with a strong, kind face was cooking broth on a stove for two boys in nightshirts, who had fallen asleep over a kitchen table. The scene looked warm and welcoming, yet I felt increasingly irritated by a faint waxen glow surrounding it. Moreover, ever since entering the museum I’d had the distinct sensation that the fingertips of my right hand were brushing against the bottom of someone’s front teeth. I decided to have a word with the museum attendant.

The Philosopher

During the last months of Nietzsche’s life, I stayed next to him in his bed. He lay in his nightshirt, propped up on great pillows, gazing into space. I didn’t know if he knew I was there or not. Yet sometimes he would turn towards me with his dark tearful eyes.
‘It’s good, isn’t it?’ he said.
His sister Elizabeth would bring in tea for us both on a silver tray. ‘This is the first time he has spoken in years,’ she told me.
I was glad to be of use, but wished I’d known him before when he was writing his last books of philosophy in Turin: Twilight of the Idols, The Anti-Christ, and Ecce Homo.
My wife and daughter were not happy. After Nietzsche died, I found all their voice mails on my mobile. They had been trying to get in touch with me for a long time – without success, since there was no coverage where I was.

‘In the Empty House’, ‘Missing’ and ‘Need’ are taken from The Underground Cabaret (Shearsman, 2020); ‘Interview with a Priest’ and ‘A Man of Some Influence’ from New York Hotel (Shearsman, 2018), ‘The House that Jack Built’ from Identity Papers (Shearsman, 2016); ‘The Philosopher’ from Makers of Empty Dreams (Shearsman, 2014); and Betrayal’ from Anonymous Intruder (Shearsman, 2009.

Ian Seed’s collections of poetry and prose poetry include The Underground Cabaret (Shearsman, 2020), Operations of Water (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2020), and New York Hotel (Shearsman, 2018), which was a TLS Book of the Year. His translations include Bitter Grass (Shearsman, 2020), from the Italian of Gëzim Hajdari, and The Thief of Talant (Wakefield Press, 2016), the first translation into English of Pierre Reverdy’s 1917 hybrid novel, Le voleur de Talan. Ian’s translation of Max Jacob’s collection of prose poems, The Dice Cup, is due to be published by Wakefield Press in 2023. Most recently, he has a chapbook, I Remember, out from Red Ceilings Press. Ian is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Chester.