The Zone


 
Hello it’s dark down here like a deck of cards
or a memoir
I don’t know how I got to the deep sweet part of the year
it’s not like heavenly bubblewrap beginning again
unboxed study of presence
I was a higher monstrosity before all of you
paroxysmal the actress had weird nipples
that’s not why the film moved me so much 
I loved the psychosis of numbers
falling in love with them
close your eyes and count down from ten
on a bike in traffic
like tulip for a tongue 
everyone will love you 
on the count of zero 
calorie infinity 
this year we got so sick
crying over ourselves in bathtubs of colder water 
we were too wet in our minds 
for god to slice machine language
I learned to sleep like a baby
which is to say cryingly
I learned to sleep like a dead man
playing dead with microdosed indifference
to the way it breathes
I’m not blowing up rumours of balloon 
with my labour
the university can engineer balladry funding 
like the man who made millions from his gold rush ballads
made more from the ballads than the gold 
I learned this while bowling
I am terrible at bowling
the way a heavy weight slings from my arm 
the let go 
of holding each other in public
pieces of art gallery candy arranged by the window 
a hundred storeys high 
above sea level 
at maximum emotional altitude
today it’s not going to get any lighter 
I won’t feel tender towards a petty
listener monologue of the star 
topping forest
says go harder fly faster 
in the face of despair
don’t spit 
the gallery candy 
fungible in glib ways like on eBay
buying up the tears of Britney 
who danced with knives on reels
available to anyone
 
 
 

wrote this on christmas day

Snowkiss 

There’s no need to be afraid this Christmas
the landlords are all gone home to their mums
in outer suburbia we can’t get 
turkey, mistletoe or snow on credit 
any more than poetry will get us
into the club of our dreams on the bus
gone very hot and fast to bed instead
with the new living elves of a breadline 

Grown livid in labouring pains for kids
at the sonnet workshop wanting to sit 
on the same old future’s necrotic knee
would it not be lovely to make a bid
adoring sentiment this counterfeit
O kisses of ownership set us free

2023 Records of the Year

100 gecs – 10,000 gecs
@ – Mind Palace Music
Almost Nothing – Almost Nothing
Bad Bunny – Nadie Sabe Lo Que Va a Pasar Mañana
Beach Fossils – Bunny
Belle & Sebastian – Late Developers
Blondshell – Blondshell
Bully – Lucky For You
Caroline Polachek – Desire, I want to turn into you
Cold War Kids – Cold War Kids
crushed – extra life
feeble little horse – Girl with Fish
Fred again…, Brian Eno – Secret Life
Gaz Coombes – Turn the Car Around
HEALTH – RAT WARS
Hozier – Unreal Earth
Jam City – Jam City Presents EFM
Julie Byrne – The Greater Wings
Kali Malone – Does Spring Hide Its Joy
katie dey – never falter hero girl
Kelora – Gloomerald
Lana Del Rey – Did you know there’s a tunnel under ocean boulevard
Max Syedtollan – Disposables
Mitski – The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We
mui zyu – Rotten Bun from an Eggless Century
Natalie Madigan – YANG
Oneohtrix Point Never – Again
PJ Harvey – I Inside the Old Year Dying
Slowdive – everything is alive
Sofia Kourtesis – Madres
Sparklehorse – Bird Machine
Sufjan Stevens – Javelin
Sun Glitters – A ma z!ng
Teenage Fan Club – Nothing Lasts Forever
The Japanese House – In the End it Always Does
The Kills – God Games
The Lemon Twigs – Everything Harmony
There Will Be Fireworks – Summer Moon
Total Leatherette – Dappled Shade
Vagabon – Sorry I Haven’t Called
Vatican Shadow – Destroy Chemical Weapons
Wednesday – Rat Saw God
Wilco – Cousin
yeule – softscars

Previous records of the year

2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022

Movies I watched in 2023

Harry Wootliff, Only You (2018)

Paul W. S. Anderson, Shopping (1994)

Edna Luise Biesold et al, The Color of Time (2012)

David Hand, Bambi (1942)

Pedro Almodóvar, Parallel Mothers (2021)

Andrew Bujalski, Funny Ha Ha (2002)

Olivia Neergaard-Holm, Jon Nguyen, Rick Barnes, David Lynch: The Art of Life (2016)

Kit Zauhar, Actual People (2021)

Marti Noxon, To the Bone (2017)

Ryan White, Pamela: A love story (2023)

American Exiles, Megsuperstarprincess, F LIST (2023)

Éric Rohmer, Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (1987)

Sara Cwynar, Glass Life (2021)

Jack Hill, Switchblade Sisters (1975)

Maria Speth, Mr Bachmann and His Class (2021)

Uli Edel, Christiane F. (1981) 

Lynne Ramsay, You Were Never Really Here (2017)

David Byrne, True Stories (1986)

Eugene Kotlyarenko, Wobble Palace (2018)

Eugene Kotlyarenko, A Wonderful Cloud (2015)

Will Lovelace, Dylan Southern, Meet Me in the Bathroom (2023)

Claude Chabrol, La Boucher (1970)

Eugene Kotlyarenko, Zeroes and Ones (2011)

Jason Reitman, Young Adult (2011)

Bill Forsyth, That Sinking Feeling (1979)

Bill Forsyth, Gregory’s Girl 2 (1980)

Catherine Hardwick, Thirteen (2003)

Eli Kazan, Splendor in the Grass (1961)

Joan Micklin Silver, Between the Lines (1977)

Cyril Schäublin, Unrest (2022)

Daniel Goldhaber, How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023)

Lana Wilson, Miss Americana (2020)

Béla Tarr and Ágnes Hranitzky, Werckmeister Harmonies (2000)

Joan Micklin Silver, A Fish in the Bathtub (1999)

John Cassavetes, A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

Dave Markey, 1991: The Year Punk Broke (1992)

Larry Clarke, Kids (1995)

Greta Gerwig, Barbie (2023)

Harmony Korine, Gummo (1997)

David Yates, Pain Hustlers (2023)

Rowan Joffé, Before I Go to Sleep (2014)

Emmanuel Marre and Julie Lecoustre, Zero Fucks Given (2021)

Hayao Miyazaki, Yuki’s Sun (1972)

Gus Van Sant, Paranoid Park (2007)

Wayne Wang, Maid in Manhattan (2002)

Noah Baumbach, The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit (2019)

Emerald Fennell, Saltburn (2023)

Books I read in 2023

Disclaimer: this list is probably missing a ton of really good poetry pamphlets that are in my room somewhere, sorry.



Gabby Bess, Alone with Other People (2013)

Charles R. Cross, Heavier than Heaven: The Biography of Kurt Cobain (2001)

Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (1962)

Anahid Nersessian, The Calamity Form (2020)

Robert Sullivan, The Meadowlands: Wilderness Adventures on the Edge of New York City (1999)

Hannah Weiner, Hannah Weiner’s Open House (2006)

Penelope Lewis and RA Page (eds), Spindles: Stories from the Science of Sleep (2015)

Kerry Hudson, Lowborn (2019)

Rose Ruane, This is Yesterday (2021)

Bernadette Mayer and Greg Masters, At Maureen’s (2013)

Nina Mingya Powles, Tiny Moons (2019)

Maggie O’Sullivan, murmur: Tasks of Mourning (2011)

Nina Mingya Powles, Small Bodies of Water (2021)

Tom Raworth, Removed for further study: the poetry of Tom Raworth (2003)

Torrey Peters, Detransition Baby (2021)

Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy (2017)

Nadia de Vries, Know Thy Audience (2023)

Savannah Brown, Closer Baby, Closer (2023)

Suzanna Slack, White Spirit Videotelephony (2023)

Suzanna Slack, Luxury Profile (2021)

Patti Smith, Just Kids (2010)

Jessie Widner, Interiors (2022)

Aaron Kent & John Welson, Requiem for Bioluminescence (2022)

Christiane F., Zoo Station: The Story of Christiane F. (1978)

Kaisa Saarinen, Weather Underwater (2023)

Fern Brady, Strong Female Character (2023)

Felix Bernstein, Notes on Conceptual Poetics (2015)

Rosemary Mayer, Ways of Attaching (2022)

Shehzar Doja, Let Us (Or, the Invocation of Smoke) (2023)

Will Harris, Brother Poem (2023)

Sarah Bernstein, Study for Obedience (2023)

Maggie O’Sullivan, murmur: tasks of mourning (2011)

Taylor Strickland, Dastrum/Delirium (2023)

Andrew Durbin, Skyland (2020)

Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life (2002)

Savannah Brown, Closer baby closer (2023)

Gareth Farmer, KERF (2022)

Ian Heames, Sonnets (2023)

Chloe Aridjis, Book of Clouds (2010)

Chris Kraus, I Love Dick (1997)

Samantha Walton, Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure (2021)

Stephanie LaCava, I Fear My Pain Interests You (2022)

Zara Butcher-McGunnigle, Nostalgia Has Ruined My Life (2021)

Chloé Hayden, Different, Not Less (2022)

Dana Ward, Some Other Deaths of Bas Jan Ader (2013)

Rob Halpern, Hieroglyph of the Inverted World (2021)

Eugene Ostashevsky and Galina Rymbu, F Letter: New Russian Feminist Poetry (2020)

Amy Key, Arrangements in Blue (2023)

bell hooks, All About Love (2000)

gentian meikleham, Kare Hansen, Sofia Archontis, Ruby Lawrence, William Knox, Meredith Macleod, Leonie Staartjes, Brave Dog (2023)

Tom Betteridge, Dog Shades (2023)

Alain de Botton, Essays in Love (1993)

Johanna Hedva, Your Love is No Good (2023)

Tom Raworth, Earn Your Milk (2009)

Maggie Nelson, The Red Parts (2007)

Robert Creeley, The Charm (1969)

Briony Hughes, Milk (2023)

Eduoard Louis, History of Violence (2016)

Eileen Myles, A “Working Life” (2023)

Daniel Alexander Jones, Love Like Light (2021)

Ivy Allsop, purge fluid (2022)

Stephanie Young, Ursula or University (2013)

Kristin Ross, The Politics and Poetic of Everyday Life (2023)

Jarvis Cocker, Good Pop Bad Pop (2022)

Alice Notley, The Speak Angel Series (2023)

Amina Cain, A Horse at Night: On Writing (2022)

Christina Chalmers, Subterflect (2023)

Suzanna Slack, gummizone (2023)

Greg Thomas, Candle Poems (2023)

Julia O’Toole, Heroin: A true story of drug addiction, hope and triumph (2005)

Kristine McKenna and David Lynch, Room to Dream (2018)

Lee Ann Brown and Bernadette Mayer, Oh You Nameless and Unnamed Ridges (2022)

Isabel Waidner, Corey Fah Does Social Mobility (2023)

Laynie Browne, Intaglio Daughters (2023)

Naomi Klein, doppelgänger (2023)

Elisabeth Roudinesco and Jacques Derrida, For What Tomorrow…: A Dialogue (2001)

J. R. Carpenter, An Ocean of Static (2018)

Alan McGee, Creation Stories (2013)

Jackie Wang, Alien Daughters Walk into the Sun: An Almanac of Extreme Girlhood (2023)

Sarah Schulman, Girls, Visions & Everything (1986)

Hélène Cixous, Manhattan, trans. by Beverly Bie Brahic(2007)

Antonio Tabucchi, Requiem: A Hallucination, trans. by Margaret Jull Costa (1994)

Bernadette Mayer, Another Smashed Pinecone (1998)

‘go touch grass: towards a poethics of meadowing’ at University of Nottingham, 13/12/23

 A21 Trent Building, Nottingham, NG72RD

 Wed 13th December 2023 3:30PM

This is a talk about meadows. A meadow is a place of expanse and exposure, where Man shoots the mother deer in the Disney classic Bambi (1942). It is a site of slag heaps, fly-tipping, wild and opportunistic overgrowth; the edge land between industrial estates sprung up with buddleia against the odds. Ambling between creative and critical approaches, this talk makes a case for the gerund meadowing as a conceptual and methodological imperative for porous and cross-pollinating consciousness. The excesses of meadows suggest how we might glean forms of abundance and ongoingness from the discards of capitalist efficiency. We will take seriously the imperative ‘go touch grass’, not as pastoral consolation or escape but rather as a cultivating logic of regeneration. The aesthetic tendencies of meadowing — dense citation practise, polyrhythmia, borrowing from the im/possibilities of dream — are entwined with an ecological ethic of entanglement and suspension.

Free tickets