Jeff Hilson Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“My poems court the absurd in that they’re incongruous, at times silly, and frequently out of tune (from the Latin absurdus) – think The Residents’ Commercial Album, Heinrich Ignatz Franz von Biber’s scordatura tuning for the Rosary Sonatas, as well as The Shaggs. They flirt with the surreal because they bring together what should perhaps best be kept apart, like a massively popular radio and TV broadcaster and now-defunct payday loan company, OCD and boats, or a folk-rock duo and the language of astrophysics. I keep coming back to Poets Theatre [sic] with its serious silliness, overdetermined stage directions and often deliberate unrealizability. Is there anything more beautifully absurd than Kenneth Koch’s tiny play about the island of Madagascar breaking away from the African continent, or Hannah Weiner’s code of signals Romeo and Juliet? I’m currently writing a series of very short plays about fungi, as well as making a record of all the dreams I’ve been having since lockdown about British poets.”—Jeff Hilson
Where these poems first appeared:
The Wogan Poem - Molly Bloom # 3
Play for Today - Organ Music (Crater Press, 2020)
Optotypical Poem Including Art Garfunkel - Latanoprost Variations (Boiler House Press, 2017)
Bio
Jeff Hilson is a poet, critic, editor and teacher. He has written five books of poetry: stretchers (Reality Street, 2006), Bird bird (Landfill, 2009), In The Assarts (Veer, 2010), Latanoprost Variations (Boiler House Press, 2017) and Organ Music (Crater Press, 2020). He also edited The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (Reality Street, 2008) and with David Grundy put together a special issue of The British and Irish Journal of Innovative Poetry on the work of the late Sean Bonney which came out in Autumn 2022. A book of responses to Jeff’s own writing, Hilson Hilson, edited by Richard Parker, is available from Crater Press. Jeff runs Xing the Line poetry reading series in London with the poet Iris Colomb. Until recently he taught Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton.
