Welcome to 2013! Nobody's Uncle is an ebook now. It's 2013 for crying out loud. Download yours here.Here is a hands-on preview of the record cover I am designing for The Jester, a much-anticipated and truly bizarre offering from Alabaster DePlume and Daniel Inzani, to be released in July. Photo by Rosie Lea.
The party is far away
but not unapproachable
just “nonchalant” like it might come over
later on but right now it’s in conversation.
It’s not thinking about having sex with me.
Although made up of a million voices
the party sounds singularly precarious like a child
who is entertained now but
might throw a tantrum if you switch off or stop watching
it perform its not-altogether-outstanding swimming feats.
All I can see is the electric light
reflected by the window
but then again I need glasses.
I mean I’m sleepily aware of it
whenever I contemplate leaving the house. It’s so dark
one misstep and I might fall down the ladder
become one with all the cool stuff
I put in my little prison.
Paris is treating me really well so far, so apologies for not being bored enough to talk to a machine. I’ve met a Londoner here who uses his “penis” as a recurring metaphor in poems. He says the scene is more accessible than most and he’s not wrong. The poetry I have seen performed in Paris so far has been outrageous. Time to step things up crazy nasty.
Two new poems (‘You don’t have a flag’ and ‘Be a sweet dude’) written and performed at Halo Acoustic Night on 11/2/13.
You are going to buy a house
so your daughter will have her own room and
I feel the same way about my favourite outfits.
Regardless of reaching for Paris
I am probably jealous of your security
of your beautiful and noble obligation
that has a name and a birthday.
I begin to doubt my own ability
to have a baby
and this worries me, because I
am highly competitive.
You’re talking about your ex now
and all the things your daughter can do.
It’s the most boring thing I’ve ever heard
it means absolutely nothing
and I stop listening
to admire you
the way you care so much
about another human being.
I want to snatch some of it, this caring,
to wear in my face or save for later
or pass on to someone small.
In some sort of a bid to capitalise on all the creative people I’ve met during my time in Bristol, I’m working on a really silly number of projects that all want completing before I go to Paris at the end of March. This blog is the first time I list them anywhere, so BEWARE! It aims to patch up my peace of mind using lumps of the reader’s actual faith. Proceed at your own risk.
1. Designing an album cover for The Jester, a disastrously beautiful new record from Alabaster DePlume and Daniel Inzani, recorded with many proper musicians on the much-rumoured tape decks of Drezz. Everyone knows it will be terrific no matter what, so I’m drawing fools.
2. Writing a poly-vocal performance piece with Tom Sastry, resident Pulpit pop star and in many ways my male counterpart, on the subject of staying or going away, or as I say by mistake, ‘going or staying away’.
3. Designing a poster for Jonny Fluffypunk‘s radical one-man poetry show, Man Up, Jonny Fluffypunk! the scratch performance of which left even us cool kids the rafters of Bristol Old Vic with no doubt that it will capture (and subsequently release, in the spirit of anarchism) many hearts.
4. Illustrating a children’s story for storyteller and part-time ninja Wilf Merttens that lends itself to a macabre visualisation. While we wait to hear if our choice publisher will have us on these graphic terms, we’re also toying with a considerably safer tale of happy lizards who love each other.
5. Cooking (no gender-bias intended) up some poetry projects with my Poetry Pulpit partner in crime Sally Jenkinson including a regular spoken word podcast in co-operation with the lately barefaced and mildly concussed but always jovial Ben Capp of The Woodshed.
6. Acting the part of ‘a crazy’ in an art-house horror short written and directed by Bruce McClure, a good man and even better poet and possibly the strangest pet on earth.
Join me now in buying a generous box of bonbons and working your socks off on Valentine’s Day, waking up halfway through next week beside what you in your bleary-eyed sugar rush comedown briefly take to be another person but is in fact your own gut.
Ahhh, romance.
Interview courtesy of Christopher Wright, who told me yesterday he doesn’t play basketball but I’ve seen him play at Montpelier court, so I don’t know. Maybe take it with a pinch of salt. The whole ten pages will feature in Solipsistic Pop vol. 5, out this spring.
lizgreenfield