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.
Dreamscape
“Dreamscape” comes from a strange dream, the principal recollection of which was an image of a woman in white cotton summer togs who lies alone on a white field. She becomes a symbol for something beyond herself.
Tirana
A short story by Andew Hart.
The Poem as a Spell in EP Jenkins’ Rituals (Broken Sleep Books) by Katy Mack
Katy Mack reviews EP Jenkins’ debut collection, Rituals (Broken Sleep Books, 2002).
Nine Eagles and the Silvery Water
Zadif presents their debut, alchemy-inspired album. These gentle, contemplative songs recall British and Spanish folk sounds with a touch psychedlia.
Local Nature Devas
The energy of the plants in the park near my home has a visionary quality. The nature devas appear. They radiate a soft, peculiar luxury, with distinct characteristics sculpted from light. Waves of light, wind blown fields of light.
Beneath the Pavement
Ever since I was a teenager, friends and family and teachers and civil servants have told me that I think too much. I overthink, they all said, which made me think. People have used other terms to describe my condition – several doctors, for example, have called it anxiety.
Life, Love & Gay Inhibitions In The Noughties
I suppose I'm an old romantic at heart. Even though I should know better, I still adhere to the old school notion of 'true love'. I tried deeply to dismiss it - telling myself it was all too complicated and that I couldn't possibly put my body through the angst that comes with it. It didn't work.
An Obituary Explanation
Death is a diabolical diamond, only beautiful when you examine its facets. These poems tell stories about death from the perspective of people who deal, not just with the realities of vacancy, but the truth about the (temporary) survivors.
A Star of Television and the Silver Screen
A new story by Douglas Cowie: “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re particularly pleased to have a special guest flying with us today, star of television and the silver screen—” And here he said the name of some actor, or actress, I supposed, but I couldn’t be sure because it sounded muffled, or at least I didn’t understand. A few people clapped. Heads began to turn around, looking for this celebrity, although why they thought he or she would be sitting back in economy class, I don’t know.
Water vapour hangs like memory in the air: a review of Alton M. Dapanas’ Towards a Theory on City Boys (Newcomer Press) by Cat Chong
Cat Chong reviews Alton Dapanas’ autotheoretical prose poems, Towards a Theory on City Boys (Newcomer Press).
When You are but a Breath of Light
Five poems by Douglas Cole.
The Room
I look outside the window, see two strange stars in the Milky Way, unexpectedly hot and covered in ash. This is not what she is looking at, obviously. It’s what I’m looking at. She is looking out at the roof tiles, studying the slanting afternoon light. She finds the impression of the sunlight on the roof tiles quite particular, quite beautiful, and it inspires in her an ache, the kind one might experience when one’s entire body is racked with fever, a fever-ache, heavy and consuming, and she can’t decide what might satisfy this ache, possibly codeine or ice cream or a walk or a nap or a shot of dark rum with lime and sugar syrup, or possibly just really horny sex, but she does’t know which because her senses are hitting her up with this aimless ache: all of her best wants hurtling at her, meteoric.
A Conversation with a Conversation
A Conversation with a Conversation is a collaboration between Thomas Helm and Jamie Macleod Bryden. It is, first and foremost, the document of an afternoon well spent in Jardins Laribal, Barcelona. Images of the park - a statue of a women, a font where the water spurts out of a god’s head, pools of water dribbling into other pools of water - somehow found their way into the text.
Mike Ferguson Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“A significant period mainly writing found prose poems brought me closest to a sustained absurdist style – the random connections of found content – but being arbitrary and staccato, they lacked the more usual storytelling…”
Laura Tansley’s Notes to Self (Trickhouse Press)
Laura Tansley’s Notes to Self documents an imagined future whilst preparing for the end of the present moment, and the rebirth of an entirely different one.
Post-Partum Document
Her little blue-eyed boy, that’s what her friends called him, and Iris decided she’d best adopt that nickname too because she hadn’t thought of one herself yet. She just called her baby ‘Nick’. She didn’t think that he looked like a Nicholas, although he did look remarkably like his father and, as his father was also called Nicholas she supposed that, actually, he must. Remarkable really was the word for it. They had the same square jaw, the same beady eyes, the same screwed-up mouth, always so small unless he was bawling which set her teeth on edge.
Five Important Female Latin American Poets
We are pleased to present five of the most important voices in the poetry written over the last 60 years in Latin America: Cristina Peri Rossi (Uruguay), Piedad Bonnett, (Colombia) Yolanda Pantin (Venezuela), Carmen Boullosa (Mexico), and Rossella Di Paolo (Peru).
Hilda Sheehan Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“I spend a lot of time trying to work things out only to find that I can’t work things out - there’s weird stuff everywhere so we may as well simplify it to bring about some clarity. The world is brutal and careless. What fascinates me is the challenge of normalising fantastical ideas and Frances and Martine gave me a dialogue to explore that.”
Extract from Seven Steeples
An extract from Sara Baume’s new novel, Seven Steeples: THE MOUNTAIN WAS full of miniature eyes. There were the yellow discs of long-eared owls, the purblind blots of pygmy shrews, the immobile domes of bluebottles, the glinting black gems of brown rats.
Holy Water
I am not sure how I first heard that a monkey had escaped from the zoo, a mandrill to be exact. I had been in my new condominium no more than a week and planned on inviting Susie to move in with me at the first opportune moment, perhaps at a violin concert I mentioned a few days earlier.
The never-ending quest…
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