I am reading tonight as special guest at the Paris Lit Up Christmas Party.  Copies of my new chapbook, moral hazard and the chemical sweats, will be available for purchase.

ma
am

Metros

The man from Bengal with the Liverpool
hat is sleeping in the metro;

the man from Alsace with the phthisic and Reeboks
is sleeping underneath the metro;

the man from Brazil with the single-glazed flat
is trying to sleep overlooking the metro;

the man from Manila with the wanderlust
oversleeps and has missed the metro;

the man from Versailles with the younger wife
sleeps at last and dreams of metros.

It comes
if you want it

but it comes
at a cost.

Belleville Park Pages

I have work in Page 13 of the Belleville Park Pages which will launch next Monday at Spoken Word (Au Chat Noir, 76 rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, 75011 Paris).  Belleville Park Pages was chosen as Foyles' Magazine of the Month for September and November and is stocked in independent bookstores all over Europe and the US.  If you can't make it Monday then come along to the Paris Lit Up Christmas Party on the 19th and pick up a copy there.

Everyone is up to
something and half
of that something
seems to be selling;

but some are tearing
down the world
to make a world they can love

buy moral hazard

You can now buy copies of my new chapbook, moral hazard and the chemical sweats, from the corrupt press website.   And why not pick up a copy of my other corrupt book, Dog, cock, ape and viper while you're at it.  I'll love you twice and shan't break either of your legs.

janual  

conducif

moral hazard and the chemical sweats

I will be launching my new chapbook, moral hazard and the chemical sweats, tomorrow at the Battalion Gallery in Amsterdam.  There will be a Paris launch on the 19th December at Culture Rapide in Belleville. Both events are free but you are encouraged to buy a book or else I will break your legs.

eduucate

butisit

Talking and talking I come upon
the stubborn rock, the real, lunch

été créée

a big man's
suggestsion

Out in the forest I opened my heart;
all of the things I had done were there
and I looked at it and felt no shame.

rageagain
stthelight

Review of DCAV

You can read a review of my collection, Dog, cock, ape and viper in the latest issue of The Journal where Ken Head wonders if my book is comprised of "powerful philosophical springboards, sub-bohemian noodlings, or both".

Only one way to find out.  Copies are available here.

euclid elucid

sousmushroombois

down by the lake where once we swam

the sky slants brackish
& the low down owlish
merchant in me smiles

her little teeth

So this is it, and it is beautiful;

a big felt curtain

and colossal night

Three o five and the man with a tracheotomy
farts around beside me with his scratchcards

Et patati et patata;
pathetic, whatever

pain au lait au chocolat au lait

The country

If I moved to the country
I would hear more birds,
eat less ethnic food
and see fewer crazies
covered in piss and faeces in the metro

but I cannot move to the country,
fifty percent of the world is here
sucking on the petrochemical tit
and until that changes
my place is among them.

loft

A loft of zoloft is where I wake of late.  And yes, of course, I am always late.  Who isn't these days since the roof fell in?  It's a big interminable huddled mess.  It's a loft of zoloft all over again.

boy

I have grown accustomed to nothing save the sound of my own silence saving the whales from themselves.  And boy do they need saving.  You see they all think they are so smart but they are not.  They are not remotely smart, just remote.

now you're talking

now I know what you're
talking about talking
isn't really talking at all

Natural

A glass of wine
...........that tastes of fart

oven

blokeships

(old) review from Poetry Wales

Swedish poet, Lars Palm (who will incidentally be reading in Paris tonight as part of the Poets Live series) has put a review of various corrupt press books up on his blog.  The review is from Poetry Wales and features me, Lars, Anamaria Crowe Serrano, George Vance and Dylan Harris.

Wherever I look I see a wall;
my neighbour's wall, a garage wall,
the neighbor's neighbors' garage wall.

lost in creosote; lost in space
between the space between
the first thought's underpinning

tripe

as tripe congealed
makes its own box

I live perennially
in my me

to replicate interminable utopias

dripfed
capful

Thursday

The buildings were grey
and the sky was gray

and I lay in the park
and cost the world nothing

New work up online

New work of mine features in the most recent issue of the Indian literary magazine, The Enchanting Verses. Many thanks to editor-in-chief, Sonnet Mondal and guest editor, Brentley Frazer.  

burnt tarmac

UAD launch review

A review of last week's reading for the launch of issue 14 of the Paris-based literary magazine, Upstairs at Duroc, is now up online.  Readers on the night were Ian Monk, Christophe Lamiot Enos, Margo Berdeshevsky and myself.  To buy a copy of the magazine contact them here.

Poem

I once took a trip to a site of natural beauty
and cultural importance

I stayed four nights and on my return
I wrote a marvelous poem
that described the site
its natural beauty
and its cultural importance
and ended with an unexpected
twist

the flight cost three hundred and twenty eight euros
the hotel six hundred and thirty

the poem was thirty-two lines long
and was worthless

Recordings up, reading tomorrow

Review, photos and recordings of the recent Poets Live event at Le Bal are now online at the Paris Lit Up website.  And since it never rains but it pours these days I will be taking part in another reading tomorrow to celebrate the launch of issue 14 of the Paris-based literary journal, Upstairs at Duroc.

"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism.  It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."
Vaclav Havel

a fist of red stripe

...until the marrow
..............................with its glimmering
....................slick

s(i)miles

i like life, it's lifelike

Easter 2013

So this is Venice, and that was the Holocene.

Poetry reading Friday March 22nd

I will be reading my poetry along with two other fantastic poets, Pansy Maurer-Alvarez and Kerry Featherstone as part of the Printemps des Poètes.  The reading will take place on Friday 22nd March at 20:30 at Le Bal (6 Impasse de la Défense, 75018 Paris).  More details including biographies of the three readers can be found here: http://poets-live.com/

soup

she warms
her fingers on the bowl

and the steam
from the soup
warms her face as well

"Throughout my life, especially as I have grown older and perhaps saner than I was, I have become more and more convinced that the one good enterprise we are all charged with, the one really vital adventure that living offers us, is to learn to unpick the fabric of the false worldview we have been given and so to become wilder and more true to ourselves and to the world as it really is, and not as our parents and teachers and self-appointed leaders would have it seem.  To become ungovernable, as it were."
                                                                                                                                 John Burnside

a weekend of white
and flavorless food

cauliflower
and honey
comb tripe

Looking at the still life I am not looking at the still life

amaranth, a crock of shite

I stand in the sun
with the sun on my face;
invisible, a monolith,
a poet.

bedbed

pencil clip

Click here to listen to me reading one of my poems accompanied and mixed by Bruce Sherfield.

Bruce is the frontman of The Sophia Lorenians who will be launching their new album on February 26th at the Nouveau Casino.

hake and macadam

Printemps des Poètes

As part of the Printemps des Poètes I will be reading at Le Bal (6 Impasse de la Défense, 75018 Paris) on Friday March 22nd at 20:30.

More details to follow but in the meantime do stop by the gallery to see their current exhibition of Antoine d'Agata's photos.

diction, salsify

There's always someone somewhere isn't there;
you know what I mean, someone somewhere waiting

moral hazard and the chemical sweats

vanishing
profligate

your treacle, a trifle, a spotted dick

for.ego

Ulmus rubra, the slippery elm
half-woke trembling in the underdogs' millenium.

So this is the dusk is it, its
bits and pieces, its conundra;
rafts of starlings tilt and bank
slanting January black.