It's finally here
It's finally here
The print version of Mercurius’s iconic Surreal-Absurd series is now available!
An anthology like no other.
Grey Matter: Three Poems by Adam Steiner
These poems are reimaginings of ordinary everyday scenes dissected into trace elements of sand, brick, flesh, earth and how they become more animated and visceral to the eye if we give them the time of looking and reflection.
Surreal-Absurd Sampler James Knight
This week we have a nice combo. Some psycho-sexual Bird King poems from James Knight and art from Alex Stevens.
The Surprising Abundance of Fire
As he investigates the causes of dissatisfaction in the 21st century, Michael Swatton draws on a wealth of deeply-felt observations that illustrate the dislocation of mind-body-spirit in the hyperreal of the everyday. His tentative solutions gesture towards the curative properties of immersion in nature and the “eternal here”.
Full Game Walkthrough
Full Game Walkthrough is an essay on art and magic with a fictional scenario informed by science fiction and videogame culture. The text explores the conditions that can be produced in integrating fantasy and magic in a digital and fictional setting (a videogame), where things are subject to constant transformation and manipulation. Ultimately, the text explores a magical perception and rendering of reality in the practices of five artists.
Tara's Playground
This is where I had my most powerful experience of unity consciousness, standing on another bridge, overlooking the park, the trees and the grass and the stream dissolving into an ecstatic field of white light, where no single object existed as an individuated presence, and I was there, merging with the radiance as absolute being, pure, undifferentiated awareness.
Surreal-Absurd Sampler Patricia Farrell
Continuing our linguistically innovative thread, this week we have Patricia Farrell. Her work is procedural. Absurd. Bodily.
Enjoy!
No Rent In Heaven
A piece of experimental nonfiction prose
Forrest Gander: At Which Point Without any Lurching Commencement
Be With, 2019 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Poetry, is a deep, blinding and stark book in which the poet recites his pain in the mirror of his wife's death. See below some poems from that authentic and voracious collection, along with a recording I made for The Nude Maja in 2016.
HOW ARE YOU THIS MORNING and other poems
I came across Mercurius through other poets. I am happy to discover the very fine work in the magazine and its open-minded editorial approach. The ideas of transformation and vitality are keen, something we poets hope to achieve. These four recent poems reflect my take on the world at this moment in time.
The Land of Mild Light
The legendary Venezuelan poet Rafael Cadenas has been admired and acclaimed by Latin American audiences for over half a century while remaining virtually unknown to US and Europe. In The Land of Mild Light, Mercurius editor Nidia Hernandez has assembled Cadenas’ most important poems in vivid translations by some fine English-language poets associated with the US-based Arrowsmith Press.
Shanty Town
A Selection of Asemic Writings.
The Linguistic Eye Scans of Robert Sheppard
This week we delve into the linguistically innovative strand of the surreal-absurd with a poem from Robert Sheppard. It is full immersion.
The Mountain Where Nothing Happens
Poetry of Life - Project Jupiter
The Mountain Where Nothing Happens (Alien Buddha Press) is a conceptual documentary poem sequence with elements of minimalism, surrealism, absurdism, linguistic topography and elemental psychogeography. Join Thomas Helm, step-by-step, as he embarks on a journey to unravel the riddles of consciousness, first in the wilds of the mountain, and then later in the hyperreal city.
On Bladee’s Mallwhore Freestyle
Alex Mazey uses an analysis of the Swedish rapper Bladee as a launchpad for concerns about consumerism, with references to Mark Fisher, Jean Baudrillard, George Ritzer and Jean-Francois Lyotard
NO TOP DOGS
Four Poems by Tim Suermondt
Some Thoughts on the Avant-garde
Why care about avant-garde? I found John Ashbery and unearthed more than a poem but a type of meditation and mental space in words.
Selected Visual Poems of Michelle Moloney King
My work is informed by play, the relationships of form / shape / colours within the page, of identity and what it means to be unique. And a longing to find the ultimate truth or get "closure" in a world of no logic and absurdity.
Surreal-Absurd Sampler Chrissy Williams
This week we have some LA surrealism from the poet Chrissy Williams. “Even cheerfulness is absurd, if you ask me. But I always want to look for some kind of route to laughter, because think of the alternative. “
Broken Sidewalks
The series is entitled Broken Sidewalks. I used written text (from a poem I wrote) and manipulated images as the basis for creating these digital artworks.
National Poetry Month Celebration from Red Hen Press
Poetry of Life - Project Jupiter
Happy National Poetry Month from Red Hen Press! Our next collaboration with Mercurius Magazine features poems from Kim Stafford, Khalisa Rae, Nikki Moustaki and Allison Joseph. Their collections were published by Red Hen this April.
The never-ending quest…
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