Aboard this mobile library
of DNA, your brothers and sisters
are remembered minutely,
catalogued discreetly in the
bristles of the chair, 'cross the
surface of the window sealing shut
this pouch of air,
like a lung collapsing forth
through red lights
to its new home.
It might be a fellow boarder or
the guard without a ward,
punching holes for striking wage;
one of... Read More
Gudrun accepted my friend request on Myspace and left a wee comment. I turned into a gushing schoolboy. Totally had a crush on her since seeing her in the 'Die Sonne' video with Blixa ten years ago.
Work in progress is correct sir, that's why it's there and not UPC yet.
I can email you the mp4 of the film if that's the best way and then you can put it on there at your whim and leisure.
I'm really looking forward to edinburgh, I've never been before, should be interesting. I'm shooting some exteriors for the feature we have in development whilst I'm there too.
French fries again today.
I know it's irresponsible but she asks in perfect syllables and breaks the fries up into perfect pieces before munching them down without any help.
I keep thinking that it's odd, our even number, and I wonder if she thinks it too.
(This afternoon I stopped at lights and winced for twenty seconds while my young one watched a mother push... Read More
The following challenge is intended as an artistic experiment to recreate a "desert island" factor in the composition of poetry or poetic language. It is part of a bid to test a writer's intentions in writing, and was assembled as a consequence of a question:
If I was stranded with no company, no contact, and no hope of rescue - in short, no... Read More
This feels like something helpful for me to beat artist block.
They call it artist block but, more often than not,
it is not just the artist who is blocked,
it is the person. Person block, this is how it should be called.
Since the true artist always lives the contradiction
of feeling detached from the others
and yet creating something that will probably somehow reach the others,
it is difficult to remember that the others should indeed not matter
in the process of creation.
When someone else starts watching and, god forbid, commenting,
the process of creation stops and fails.
This is true even if the watcher is just in the artist's head.
Regarding the lyrics, the first are from Wolf Like Me by TV on the Radio, the second from Like Eating Glass by Bloc Party. To be honest, I'm glad you asked. I usually quote with titles, but for some reason it didn't feel appropriate this time. I'm not sure why.
The Twelve Step program is pretty firmly based on the Jesus (or, if you prefer God) thing. But it sneaks up on you. They save him (or her if you're that way inclined) for the third step, so you're already well on your way before you realise what's going on. For the record, they go:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol_that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
But yeah, what does Jesus know 'bout drinking? I wonder if that water trick he does works with vodka also?
appurtenance: does anyone fancy writing a sentence or two of blurb for my page on Lulu? what's up there now is only the brief bio from the back of the book; it doesn't tell you anything about the poetry. thing is, i'm not sure what i am - a modernist? a post-Bukowskian? a poetic diarist? i really haven't a clue, and i am... Read More
hey pal. yeah i'm not on here that much but yeah, still around. I guess i should be gettin around to posting a few more little poems.
Congrats on your first volume! I shall definitely check it out Brother Kallimachus!
lol, non students are exempt from the shirt rule :p
dead baby jokes rule
this is the only thing on my cpu - don't like it that much any more since my style's changed quite abit (this was during foundation when I was working in textures more than form so the photo isnt really showing the painting)
in response to all your comments: I'm equally glad to hear that you can appreciate my work. as a so-called "postmodernist" i often get the "it's nice but i don't really understand it" line and that's depressing as all hell. as regards your work, I'd say that it's easy to overestimate the degree to which your work is 'alienated' from the contemporary current; there're more poets than you think working in a similar vein, and I think there will always be a place for your type of work. if anyone's going to be interesting the unpoetical 'masses' in poetry, i think it far more likely to be you than me.
and I definitely agree that poetry will not die til language dies - after all, it's the vital force of language, and coupled with slang, its what forces language to move forward and change and evolve. poetry will never die as long as there are poets!
and yeah, poetry is a kind of abstention, but its also a different form of participation. as long as language is a vital force in civilization, poetry will be a primary participant in life.
I share, in general, your disdain for what you so aptly term 'the done thing' - that's exactly why facing all these questions is so hard when the person you love is so invested in these 'done things'
good news: my mother has had interest regarding her new novel. the Blake Freedman agency have responded expressing interest in the book and they want to see the rest of the manuscript (she sent them only the first chapter). if they offered my mum representation and she accepted they would then shop the book around to publishers; Blake Freedman are a big name (or so... Read More
Savchenko is contemporary, yes, which is partly why I'm so delighted to have discovered him; gives me hope in painting.
The cosmos freaks you out? I can see where you're coming from, though, yes.
I don't think there was ever a possibility of the guides not taking me back at that point; it literally felt like an impossibility because they had everything so effortlessly in hand. BUT, maybe if they hadn't taken me back I would've died in my sleep that night
Humphrey Astley was born in Oxford, England in 1982. He is founder and curator of the ongoing art exhibit Rain Over Bouville (.co.uk), from which these twenty-five poems have been culled. This is his first collection.
i hate writing about myself in the formal third person, but if i am going to self-publish i am going to have to do... Read More
I'm just impressed you didn't try to rhyme 'Swallow bus' with 'pe-nis'. It was difficult even initially for me and that the kind of thing that would have amused me for ages
Humphrey Astley was born in Oxford, England in 1982. He is founder and curator of the ongoing art exhibit Rain Over Bouville (.co.uk). This is his first collection.
If you have to keep that line in, switch culled to drawn. Culled probably rankles because of its meaning. To cull is to withdraw for the purpose of disposing (ie. old stock). Here it is from dic.com
"esp. something picked out and put aside as inferior."
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