Surreal-Absurd Sampler Jenna Clake

“When I first started reading surreal and Absurd poetry, I was amazed by that the poems – and the poets – could do. I think this is what I’m always trying to do in my poems – see what I can do, and what the poem can do, what I can get away with. I want to always explode what poetry ‘should’ do. For me, the Absurd seems like a game of frustration, where the poet is simultaneously in love with poetry and ridiculing it, and mocking the reader, and themselves; it’s a Menippean satire where everyone and everything, including the poet and the poem, is the brunt of the joke; and it’s a game of authority – acquiescing it to only wrongfoot the reader and take it back. It’s as fun as it is emotionally devastating, and perhaps so emotionally devastating because it’s fun: the moment where the surreal lens is pulled back slightly, and you feel a punch to your stomach. My favourite Absurdist poetry is the kind that pulls you into a dreamlike situation, and makes you question what is real, what isn’t, and whether that even matters.”—Jenna Clake

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Bio: Jenna Clake's debut collection of poetry, Fortune Cookie, was awarded the Melita Hume Prize and an Eric Gregory award, and shortlisted for the Somerset Maugham Award. Her second collection, Museum of Ice Cream, is published by Bloodaxe.