Sophie Herxheimer Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“I have always mixed up the strands of making things, painting, cooking, poetry, performance, writing, childcare. The common element is play. Surrealism is just a way to cope with the extreme ordinariness and horror of daily life. If we don’t play, it’s like an acceptance of a world in which we eat and dress from a giant monotonous supermarket – we are at the mercy of the chains! Better keep inventing ways to break them, by reversing some of of the apparent logic that dominates the culture: the bizarre rules that make news bulletins appear linear, has us wearing black puffa jackets and painting our walls in neutral shades! As well as traps of convention and formula, the world is also full of juxtapositions that one only has to listen to or look at – and copy down accurately - to produce absurdity in all its astonishing glory.”
—Sophie Herxheimer 2024.
Three from 60 Lovers to Make and Do (Henningham Family Press, 2019)
Anaesthetist
She stitched together a lover
from post-operative discard:
organs and extrusions
and an eagle’s feather stolen
off an Apache war bonnet.
As he came to he was furious -
then he laughed.
Why should I look at my painful history
when you have given me a future?
He flexed his arms
from shoulder to finger tip.
The masectomised breasts
stitched decoratively all over his torso
rose and fell like inflatable fish scales
Am I such a curiosity? he asked.
You are perfect, said the anaesthetist,
and she meant it.
Confectioner
She sculpted a lover from marzipan
flipped the sign on the door from open to closed
stared long and hard at her handiwork
snuck two dainty bites from the back of his neck.
The almond night fell about them like lace.
Firefighter
She plucked a lover from green baize
and a rain-warped pack of playing cards,
he was devastatingly good looking.
She tried to find the courage to address him
but he evaporated like a fortune
amassed over several generations
and spent in one afternoon.
Five from Index (zimZalla, 2020)
A Comrade Visits
Anna Akhmatova comes to my studio at dusk and we look at this article featuring women poets and what they were like as babies, if they knew they’d be poets as children, and whether their parents encouraged them.
There are a few cute black and white photos of baby girls, including me and her. “I want us to each answer a few questions about this piece” says Anna Akhmatova. “as honestly as possible please. I’ll record us, you go first.” In the photo of me, Mum’s in the middle done up like a film star with a baby clutched to each side. I say: “I remember being dressed up in frills as a little girl and just weeing in my clean white knickers till they turned black. I loved and hated the neat socks and all the other constraints.” Anna Akhmatova records everything without reacting. “What about you?” I ask. In the photo of her in the magazine, she’s looking extremely serious and being held up by her smiling mother. “Oh yes, I knew I was a poet even then!” I record her saying, “I’d put all the pebbles in my mouth to feel the smoothness of them, and then try to turn their different shapes and sizes into words.” “What else did you do?” I continue. “I was mostly poetic,” she sighs, “lying in my pram looking at the exact circles the sun was painting through the transparency of leaves above me. Comparing these to the dinner plates that towered with strawberry jelly on the shadowed table in the house – I used my long eyelashes to comb through each detail.”
The above poem was first published in Poetry Wales
Sophie Herxheimer is a London based artist and poet. Her work has been shown at her local allotments, Tate Modern and on a giant mural along the sea-front at Margate. She’s held many residencies in the UK and internationally. Projects include a hand printed 300 metre tablecloth for the Thames Festival, a life-size concrete poem in the shape of Mrs Beeton to stand next to her grave, and a pie on the lawn of an old people’s home big enough for seven drama students to jump out of, singing. She has illustrated six fairy tale and mythology collections, most recently The Mighty Goddess, (The History Press, 2023.) Her collection Velkom to Inklandt (Short Books, 2017) was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Her book 60 Lovers to Make and Do, (Henningham Family Press, 2019) was a TLS Book of the Year. Her latest collection is INDEX (zimZalla, 2021), a box of 78 collage poems, made from found text, published as a deck of prophetic cards.
Sophie Herxheimer writes extraordinary poetry -Carmen Calil, BBC Radio 4
