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.
Approved Abuse and other poems
Three poems by Neal Mason.
Evan Nicholls Surreal-Absurd Sampler
My work engages the surreal for two reasons: fun and ease. In writing, I haven’t found anything that comes as natural as the absurd and unnatural. Or as entertaining.
Great Novels of the Twenty-First Century
This is less a list than a series of recommendations; it is unranked and serves as a jumping off point into the fabulous world of twenty-first century fiction. Some of the authors are well-known, others may surprise you. Each book has been lovingly hand-picked by a Mercurius editor/contributor. No doubt the list contains glaring omissions. But perhaps that doesn’t matter.
A Review of Amanda Earl’s Genesis by Katy Wimhurst
Katy Wimhurst reviews Amanda Earl’s Genesis (Timglaset, 2022).
Weeping in the Middle of a Roundabout
When they were a couple, Sam and Pam constantly disagreed with each other. Drinks vessels rim up or down? Windows open or closed. Monogamy or affairs? Sam, a lecturer in aesthetics (notable articles on Stravinsky’s ambivalence to radio) would argue cups go up and down with so-called monogamy. Pam – an abstract painter (compared to John Hoyland) thought the opposite.
Liam Bates Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“My interest in the surreal and absurd predates my interest in poetry. We almost all have dreams, I guess, but not everybody wants to hear about them. I have always wanted to hear about them, to have a poke around in someone's selfhood, beyond those pesky impositions like veracity and linear time.”
2 Mouths
I can’t concentrate. I lie down in the afternoon when I sh/could be working. I lie down like my mother lay down. I thought she’d been sunbathing, until I realised she’d been resting before dying. I used to think she was lazy, lying down when there’s so much to do.
Rereading Stein
Andrea Mason, Alex Mazey, Franco Cortese and Susie Campbell respond to L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Magazine’s 1978 feature, Reading Stein.
Sascha A. Akhtar Surreal-Absurd Sampler
“The surreal and the absurd are the twin axes along which the expanse of my work may well be plotted. I would say my introduction to Salvador Dali at a young age had a profound effect on my ideas of the imagination and what forms it could and indeed must produce…”
Famine: An Artwork
With God, the dirty ould bodach, running around in ditches spying on us, my childhood was a very watched event. The concept of privacy didn’t hit me (and it was a good schkelp across the face) until much later, and when it did hit (in my early adulthood) I was able to identify those scratchy doubts I’d had as a kid as privacy’s absence. A bodach in every step, God was one helluvanopponent. He was the demon that I battled right from the beginning, right from when I was able to form a memorable thought. Think Jam. Lovely. Suffer. The basics.
Food.
Thwart.
Thomas Helm Surreal-Absurd Sampler
For me, writing surreal-absurd poetry is a way of sifting through the unconscious and encountering things that feel important there. Often the best images are those that feel all too real despite their obvious artifice.
Happy New Year Mr. President Episode III: Leviticus Revisited
Satire with an inkling of the infinite. A spiritual journey, a metaphysical quest, a labyrinth without a centre, you name 'em, they'll tick' em.
GenderFux by Jem Henderson, Jonathan Kinsman and JP Seabright (Nine Pens, 2022): Reviewed by Pragya Suman
Pragya Suman reviews GenderFux by Jem Henderson, Jonathan Kinsman and JP Seabright (Nine Pens, 2022).
Speaking in Tongues
The moment an Englishman opens his mouth, another Englishman despises him… An essay on how dialect-bias pervades the UK’s social hierarchy and what growing up with the “wrong” accent can mean.
Communion
Good poems traffic in realities that are strange, ambiguous, and (at times) incommunicable. Since the spiritual realm (as I understand it) is strange, ambiguous, and incommunicable, maybe poems are our best windows into that place.
The Tower of Babel
In the summer of 2010 I found myself collecting and downloading reproductions of works of art that referenced the Tower of Babel which I pasted into a new sketchbook. By the end of the summer, I had painted a series of 12 towers on A1 paper, another 12 ‘Small Towers’, this time around a foot square in format, and a number of studies and sketchbook pages on the same theme.
Interviews with Nine Poets
Mercurius editor Nidia Hernandez takes the poetic pulse of 2022 by interviewing nine poets at the Miami Book Fair: Robert Pinksy, Victoria Redel, John Freeman, Su Cho, Sherry Shenoda, Diane Thiel, Kemi Alabi, Shelley Puhak, and Peter Balakian. Listening to these remarkable voices is an excellent way of wrapping up 2022 and ushering in 2023…
This Voice
This Voice is a multi-media work by Andrew Hodgson. Presented here are: This Voice (1), an audio-visual work commissioned for Humber Mouth - Hull Literature Festival, 2021, and the text for a companion piece, This Voice (2).
Blanca Varela
“Blanca Varela is neither pleased with her discoveries nor drunk with her songs. With the instinct of the true poet, she knows when to be silent” - Octavio Paz
Noir
Noir is a new piece from Imogen Reid, first published in Praxis, Eds: Andrew Hodgson, Chris Clarke and Rosie Snajdr, Manchester, Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2021.
The never-ending quest…
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