|
Mine and Philip Terry's collaborative novel When Two Are In Love or As I Came To Behind Frank's Transporter came out in 2019 from Crater Press. It's bonkers in plot and perhaps Oulipian in method. Below I give a little outline of how it was composed. You can get the book here (just scroll down to Crater 57) - www.craterpress.co.uk/  The whole novel was composed over email for about 2-3 years (and then 2 years editing). During this time we met and discussed the project casually, performing it on about five occasions.
There is a base story, which is 32 paragraphs, each with 32 words. 32 words is an arbitrary number; it’s the amount of words that were in the first paragraph that I sent to Phil as an example. The base story runs along the top of each chapter, is in italics and is a smoochy, banal romance. From each base paragraph we took turns to change a word at a time until all of the original words had become alternative words. We had to keep grammatical sense (but occasionally we broke this rule or added punctuation). My original idea was to change the original words but essentially keeping the same story and tone going by replacing with synonyms (we did this in chapter 26). But right from the off Phil put in lots of surreal and trippy changes, which was a lot of fun, and makes for a massive weave of narrative. I went with that. Sometimes one of us would have to make a ‘boring change’ like changing ‘the’ to ‘a’ in order for grammatical sense to remain. Because of these ‘wasted’ turns the other writer would sneak in. And then a change that one of us had planned for a few moves in the future would suddenly no longer be possible. An example of this is in chapter 27 where I changed ‘back’ for ‘sang’, gearing myself up in the next go to change the phrase ‘sang through rain’ into ‘sang Purple Rain’ but then Phil took ‘through’ and turned it into ‘sang Hard Rain’. We never really talked about exactly how our individual directions were ‘thwarted’ as it would have spoiled the writing of the novel. In any case the ‘disappointment’ of changes that were no longer possible were far outweighed by the new unexpected changes that the other person had made, forcing both of us to write about things we’d never expected to. Some chapters accidentally were genre based. For example, Chapter 1 (at least for me) was like Pierrot Le Fou, a film by Jean Luc Goddard. Others were deliberately written in a particular genre. Chapter 5 is written as bad sci-fi and Chapter 21 is written in the style of Phil’s translation of Dante’s Inferno. We were both conscious to repeat tropes and characters in chapters. Wolf and Petra, both invented by Phil, make frequent appearances and are the main protagonists.
0 Comments
 Advance notice of a reading I'll be doing as part of the fringe festival at English Shared Futures.
Takes place: Friday 8th July 8:00pm – 10:00pm | THE SALUTATION 12 Higher Chatham Street Manchester, M15 6ED Features: James Davies, Maria Sledmere, Emma Bolland, Kate Feld, Marie Crook, Adam Farrer LINK - www.englishsharedfutures.co.uk/fringe-events/ Along with many other really interesting poems by others I have a poem in a new anthology exploring the work of Aphex Twin. My poem Drbkqs Rlmpxld (L+7) is a remix of Aphex Twin’s album Drukqs.
It was a poem that allowed me to carry out a method I’ve been wanting to apply for years now but have never found the right context for. So thank you to the editors - Rishi Dastidar & Aaron Kent - for the direction! Taking the track titles from the Aphex Twin double-album Drukqs (many of which look like unreadable computer code) I applied an L+7 on certain letters in a systematic way. That is to say I moved each letter forward 7 in the alphabet, e.g. A becomes H. On the majority of the Aphex Twin track titles I changed the consonants only, following the procedure, and leaving his vowels. When there were numbers in track titles I changed just the vowels and moved the number forward 7; the remix tracks where numbers appear end up having no vowels in them at all (there are a couple of errors in the poem, it's a hell of a thing to edit). Interestingly, using L+7 emulates methods that Aphex Twin uses to generate track titles; like on I Care Because You Do where some of the songs are anagrams of his name. As far as I’m aware this is the first time an L+7 has been carried on any text. A couple of examples of the remixes: Consonant switch - Jynweythek Ylow becomes Qfudefaoer Fsod And Vowel and number switch - Omgyjya-Switch7 becomes Vmgyjyh-Swptch14 You’ve got so many machines, Richard: an anthology of Aphex Twin poetry is out now from Broken Sleep books https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/you-ve-got-so-many-machines-richard-an-anthology-of-aphex-twin-poetry  I've been working with Matt Dalby over the last month on some poetry-walking/walking-poetry for this live event. Loads of great poets to hear. Come along on to The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Friday October 1st : 7pm doors : Free entry.
More details here - https://www.europeanpoetryfestival.com/manchester21 Patricia Farrell and Michael Egan Ailsa Holland and David Gaffney Tom Jenks and SJ Fowler JT Welsch and Colin Herd Robert Sheppard and Joanne Ashcroft Lydia Unsworth and Sarah Clare Conlon Callie Michail and Scott Thurston David Spittle and Stephen Sunderland James Davies and Matt Dalby On July 20th 1841 the poet John Clare decided to ‘escape’ the asylum in The High Beech in Epping Forest, Essex, where he was interned, some 100 or so miles away from his beloved home in the village of Northborough, just outside of Peterborough and go home. He trudged the distance without food or money, sleeping rough – it took him four days. His journey is detailed in his diary Journey out of Essex. In 2000 Iain Sinclair also walked Clare’s route – with some minor changes – documenting it in his excellent book The Edge of the Orison – the phrase ‘The Edge of the Orison’ is taken from Clare’s writings. The diary at Junction Box records a similar walk that I took between 19-23 October 2019.
You can read it HERE I interviewed Lucy about her 6 favourite books of poetry as guest host on this new poetry podcast. Lucy chose poems by Katy Bohinc, Lisa Roberton, Chelsey Minnis, Richard Makin, Mira Mattar and Rilke.
The link is HERE Review of Philip Terry's A Handbook of British Birds and Peter Jaeger's English Trees: A Brexit Poem5/19/2021 ‘Bee-eater’ and ‘Rook’ Terry writes, ‘white‘Bee-eater’ and ‘Rook’ Terry writes, ‘whitebeam’ and ‘fig’ writes Jaeger.beam’ and ‘fig’ writes Jaeger.
Read more of my review of these two excellent books at The Babel Tower Notice Board HERE 'Three of my earliest published works: The Manual Handling Process, Acronyms and Plants deal with trying 'not' to say.'
Substantial interview about my poetry over the years - http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2021/03/12-or-20-second-series-questions-with_30.html One of my poems from Forty-Four Poems and a Volta is in Chrissy Williams' excellent Perverse magazine. It's presented in the form of a mobile. It has something to do with the British Empire, Philip K. Dick and species extinction. https://perverse.substack.com/p/perverse-5a?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twitter
'Having read both these books across a couple of weekends, I’m now clear that I’m reading my current state of mind through them. Of course, contemporary poetry is the perfect genre through which this happens. Abstracted or context-loose signs allow the mind to re-thread what remains concrete, black and white, on the page.'
More here - LINK |
