Surreal-Absurd Sampler Vik Shirley

Welcome to the second installment of surreal-absurd poetry. This week we have the fab Vik Shirley. We hope you enjoy. Here is her artist statement:

These poems are a selection from my chapbook Corpses and my collection, The Continued Closure of the Blue Door. Although Corpses moves the surreal narrative to a miniature scale and grotesque realm, the subconscious intention of all the work here is to shake people out of their complacencies and show the absurdity of life, death, the self, and the rituals we hold dear. I find that using humour within the surreal and absurd allows me to explore taboo, depressing or frightening subjects in a way I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise. Dark humour and the surreal, when combined, work as a protection and defence mechanism against, what Breton called, “the arrows of reality”. This seems to give both reader and writer a well needed release through laughter transforming something that might hurt us into something that stimulates and entertains us, expanding our minds, leaving us feeling good instead.



Vik Shirley's chapbook, Corpses (Sublunary Editions), was published in 2020. Her collection, The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN), in 2021. Disrupted Blue and other poems on Polaroid, a book of photo-poetry, is forthcoming with Hesterglock Press. She is currently studying for a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal at the University of Birmingham.

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