theimportanceofbeingaloof

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

38 things i like

because today is the 9/5/2025 so i make that 38 trips around the sun

Being myself

Coffee (Cappuccino, Americano or Flat White with whole milk)

Victory

Nottingham Forest

Holidays

Walking by the ocean

Snacks (peanuts, cashew nuts, crisps, olives etc )

Bob Dylan going electronic

Greta Thunberg

Le Cygne by Charles Baudelaire

Saturday night and Sunday morning

Anthropocene poetry journal

Urban Outfitters

Marilyn Monroe

Everyone I grew up with - tho we don’t speak any more :(

The Beatles

Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles under the sunset

Zelda & F Scott Fitzgerald

Retiro Park, Madrid in October

Shopping in large supermarkets

Génie by Arthur Rimbaud

Frédéric Chopin's fringe

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe by Édouard Manet

Ice cream weather

Blossom Hibbert

Paris, au bord de la Seine

Kind people

Coffee dates with Juliette Binoche

Greenpeace

Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath

Maria Sledmere

Colourful shirts

33

Kendrick Lamar

Midnight in Rome on the Spanish Steps

Aaron Kent

Anceint Greek Philosophy

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

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Thanks for reading, or not reading, either way is good. Charlie xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

An introduction to the post-epicurean psychedelic school of poetry

Plato: Socrates, my old pal, great to see you in this Athenian dive bar. I have been having a few doubts & frustrations with the direction of contemporary poetry. My doubts are nothing new, I am sure they are shared by others, however, to explain briefly, I feel very little of note has happened in poetry since the publication of The Waste Land in 1922. The rampant commercialisation of advanced capitalism alongside other dark forces, especially the rise of social media, where any idiot with a few publications to their name is automatically a poet, has led to average writers becoming, in their own heads only ‘famous writers.’ This includes those who hold office as Poet Laureate, edit the Poetry Review, and those who win large cash prizes. I want to distance myself from the commercialisation of the art form. I want to make my disapproval loud & clear. I thought the best way to do this would be to establish my principles in a new school of poetry.

Post-epicurean psychedelia exists at an intellectual remove from a culture in decline. It finds its remedy for the ills of our society in the concentration on the image of modernism, along with good things that have come out of writing, in terms of the opening up of the arts to diverse backgrounds & developments in sound, tone and form that I, as the leader of this new school, enjoy. I think we need to go back to modernism with its imagery-heavy and luscious landscapes and couple this with solid foundations of Epicurean philosophy and playfulness. These are the founding precepts of my school. How would you frame your objections to the ‘leading’ poets of our generation? I mean, would you rather read one of their poems or endure a long-winded public debate in the Agora about whether Maria Sledmere knows how to pronounce “philosophia”?

Socrates: So does one have to be a hedonist to enrol in this school? It sounds a tad programmatic. Are you a hedonist? Are you a decadent? Some of those 1890s chaps took things to extremes. I've come to believe that the mature poet writes the poems they have no choice but to write, irrespective of who might happen to be Poet Laureate or the flavour of the month, and those poems will, in one way or another, reflect their life, their character, personality, experience, views on cookery, blah blah etc.

It's an endless, unpredictable, fascinating, bewildering, unsettling, and often really annoying process. If one is lucky, after everything, or somewhere along the line, one will establish what people call "a voice". So, given all of that, at least half of which I might agree with at any one time, I would assume that if one is a true hedonist, a fully signed-up Epicurean, their poems will naturally reflect that philosophy, and they would not need to enroll in a school, or adopt a program. If the poet only adopts the guise of the hedonist you'd end up with dishonest poems. But perhaps dishonest poems can be okay. Poems are only machines made out of words, after all. Discuss.

Plato :I’m not looking for any poets to sign up, enroll, or join my school. I’m not offering my services as an editor for free, I'd rather hear a poem about Luke Kennard deciding whether to go for the last piece of lamb at the symposium than another ‘self-reflection’ on the poet’s breakfast habits. Either you are part of the movement or not. I do not care. On a personal level, it is unlikely your poetry, my dear friend, as much as I admire you, your poetry would never be accepted as post-epicurean – you style is outdated - though I do admire your critical writing. Post-epicurean psychedelia is not pedagogical; it is philosophical. The principles of creative writing schools do not exist – they are essentially a sham, a pyramid schemes from a failed Blairite experiment to open up education to the masses, which allows those willing to demean themselves for money, i.e. academics comfortable lives and plenty of opportunity to waffle and hold forth over meaningless forms.

I like your idea of poems as machines made of words, but your conception of hedonism is misconceived. Epicurus was not “taking things to extremes” – not by modern standards. The hedonism Epicurus believed in was the pursuit of ‘peace of mind’ or ‘a life free from stress’ through letting pleasure dictate his day. “Day is desire and night is sleep” – as Wallace Stevens later wrote.

Poetry, then, must go on pleasure and treat pain in a more nuanced way. There is also too much focus on the identity of the author; the work is more important. Sylvia Plath, though a manic depressive, might still be considered Epicurean in that she bit her future husband on the face – an example of someone not afraid of being alive. Her poetry vibrates with the thrilling chill of life. However, Plath’s disciples, many of whom send me poems to Anthropocene, are not welcome in my school, nor are they welcome in my journal. Anthropocene, for the many citizens of Athens who are unaware, is an online poetry journal I started while studying at the University of East Anglia, after becoming disillusioned with my teachers I stopped going to the workshops and seminars. I started the journal in July 2019 and my fellow Epicureans Aaron Kent and Laia Sales Merino soon joined me in the process - they are still involved today. At UEA I did not appreciate being told how to write. Fast forward six years of editing a successful poetry journal - I can no longer read the ‘sob story.’ I am tired of hearing the same boring ‘reflection on selfhood’ . I’d rather hear from poets who enjoy life, or at least, make an attempt to enjoy life. Post-epicurean psychedelia is completely free and exists a million miles from the identity of the author. It has nothing to do with academia or the vain and vacuous notions of a million ‘social media poetry influencers.’ However, you can join no matter your background – we are open-minded – it is simply about outlook, and fatally, skill.

Some poets I’d recommend reading who share our principles: Jayant Kashap - one of the great post epicureans. Maria Sledmere - one of the leaders of this generation's avant garde - Plus many other fantastic poets: Shannon Clinton-Copeland, Isabelle Baafi, Hera Lindsay Bird, Matthew Haigh, Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Jen Calleja, Antosh Wojcik, Joe Wright, Anthony Capildeo, Golnoosh Nour, Luke Kennard , Lewis Buxton and Sarah Fletcher. If you write in an adventurous, imagery-heavy style, with little to zero focus on your identity, there is a place for you in Post-epicurean psychedelia, no matter the colour of your skin or sexual persuasion, or if, in my case, you are a bit of a dickhead. On a slide note, my dear Socrates, are you sure those sandals are “appropriate for public discourse” ?

Socrates: You missed, somewhat, the joke. John Ashbery tells of the lady who one day asked how she could enroll in the New York School [Editor’s note – does anyone apart from me and Socrates know this joke?]. Also, I don’t think I have "misconceived" hedonism – I merely pointed out that some of the so-called decadents of the 1890s took pleasure to often extreme lengths.

But, to move on. I am not at all averse to having fun in poetry. If you had read much of my work, you would probably already know that, although what is fun for one person might be sheer tedium for another. It's that old New York School influence, and the time I spent with some of those poets in person – Kenneth Koch, Paul Violi, and Charles North, for example – always involved a lot of laughter, and sometimes more laughter than poetry. But I digress a little, and want to ask a question.

Why do you use the word "psychedelia" in your description of what you're up to? Are you on drugs?

Plato: I’ve read a lot of your poetry and I don’t think you count among the great Athenians, plus your toga is falling down to reveal a rather paunchy midriff. What have you been eating? Why are there yellow stains on your socks ? Despite your poor sartorial taste, the reason I like hanging out with is that you, like me, have strong opinions about poetry. The simplest answer to your question over drugs is no, due to family experience I am aware of the harsh realities of drug addiction. I prefer to live cleanly and feel good through a healthy diet [doubly important for me as I am diabetic]. I do like drinking a lot of coffee when I write and I indulge in the odd vape – a habit I picked up from a girl I used to see around Athens, from time to time.

Why psychedelia? It is an attempt to get away from the mundane, since we have identified it is the mundane which is haunting contemporary letters. I also agree with Bob Dylan, who almost everyone likes, so I am assuming you do too, when he said that once in a while the mind needs to get a little twisted, be that on wine, weed, or whatever – those are not really drugs, they are just ways of escaping from our mundane realities. However, despite an interest in fracturing the real, the psychedelic in post-epicurean refers to the heady and intoxicating imagery. I am aware that you hate my poetry as much as I hate yours, but I will use this as an excuse to quote from my second favourite critic, as you are the first, Socrates, below is Andreea Iulia Scridon writing about my poetry in The London Magazine:

With an acute awareness of a quotidian magic “lovers tonguing in a foreign language,” Charlie Baylis walks through an alternate reality of “orange trees with these orange seeds,” “a palace of tender hearts,” takes us “tearing down sunset boulevard/where the window blinds are lit by gorgeous light/the boats in the harbour twinkle with soft French verbs.”

It is within the gorgeous light of soft French verbs and the sunset swinging through the windows of Sunset Boulevard that the school of post-epicurean poetry was born. It is there that it will stay, far removed from the accessible twaddle that ‘the common man’ can relate to. Contemporary poetry’s ‘leading lights’ make the fatal mistake of giving the reader what they want – not giving the reader what they need. Poetry readers deserve to be given a challenge, rather than Christmas card messages. For me, as I stated at the outset of this discussion, we must go back to modernism and reset the dial. We must go back to H.D. and Pound and Marianne Moore and Eliot and forget the confessionals and the luxurious boredom of the last thirty years. The only way forward is the way back – would you agree? Or has there been a better poem written since T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land that I missed?

Socrates: The reason I asked about drugs – a little bit tongue-in-cheek, though you missed that – and the use of the word "psychedelic" is because that word has a meaning as well as fairly specific connotations for someone of my age and with a certain history of social and leisure activities. I wasn’t expecting a run-down of your own particular intakes. It turns out you’re using the word in the vague way people often do to indicate colorful and/or vivid imagery.

Anyway, to move on, and at the risk of sounding like the boring old fart I might be, I would suggest that speaking about giving the people what they need, rather than what they want, has overtones I find a little unsettling. I think history is littered with people who have said something very similar, albeit it had nothing at all to do with poetry.

For myself, I would rather read and try to write the poetry I want to read and write and leave it at that. Frankly, to have a reasonably significant number of people read and enjoy one's work, and to get the thumbs up from poets of stature and that one looks up to, is about as much, or perhaps more, than one can hope for. Simon Armitage is just part of life's wallpaper, and there's a lot of wallpaper. If people enjoy his work, let them. It's not worth losing sleep over.

I would say, though, that when I was about 25 and starting out in “Poetry World,” I wanted a revolution too, and wanted what me and my mates were doing to take the place of whoever the big names were at the time. It's a healthy attitude for young poets to have. You will probably tell me I'm being patronizing, but never mind.

As for The Waste Land, I think it's a tremendous poem, as well as being of obvious historical importance in terms of its effect on the course of literary history. It's quite a feat to be both those things. But there are other great poems that have been written since, though to compare them as "better" or "worse" is a bit apples and oranges. They're great poems of a different order and have not had the same seismic effect that Eliot's poem did – which is not very surprising. I'm thinking of particular poems by, for example, Bishop, Stevens, Williams, Ashbery, O'Hara to name a few (predictable) suspects. And yes, they're all American, but I have my leanings, .

I'm afraid I have little to say about the future of poetry. It will go on, in all its varied forms. I predict that you will have a book out from an independent publisher I have never heard of and it will garner praise from some quarters.

Plato: Aha! You’re talking about my second collection - i am working in it now - it is going to be called ‘white flowers’. The writing is going well - though it is hard. However, post-epicurean school is not about my poetry. The school is an attempt to push the art form forward. I don’t have a problem with anyone who holds a pen and uses the pen to write poems. Unlike you, I acutally love Simon Armitage. I love Carol Ann Duffy. I think Simon Armitage’s status in the “Poetry World” reflects relatively fairly on the quality of his writing; whereas you’ve hardly pulled up any trees in a 356-year writing career. Anyway, moving on from trading barbs...and throwing a brick instead: Why are certain poets dumbing poetry down to the extent it tastes like hamburgers which are just hamburger flavour hamburgers? I encourage young poets (and myself!) to get off the internet. Put down Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, or whatever David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is called these days and get down to a library and read for an hour. Study the craft. Poetry is worthy of your time. The school will only admit poets who are readers, and good reading is always followed by good poems.

A young person paying to attend a creative writing school needs to be cautious; the academics who are teaching you are part of a system designed to exploit. Post-epicurean poetry empowers its followers to throw their teacher’s work in the bin, tear it apart, and spit on it. We must get back to the idea of the artistic sublime. We must get back to writing for pleasure, a true concept of pleasure which takes the writer down to their darkest ebb of the conscience, where they experience every dark emotion possible before they resurface in joy. We must treat the internet with caution – it does strange things to our minds. Let’s have a revolution where we create a new school of thought, where the only quality that matters to the poem is its artistic value. The rest is noise.

Finally – my dear Socrates, I would like to express how grateful I am for you taking the time to talk to me. Allow me to treat you to the next round. Come along old fellow, we’ve bored the public of Athens for long enough with our ideas.

[Plato pushes through the queue and orders a couple of whiskies – Simon Armitage walks into the bar … Socrates runs a mile]

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Thank you Martin Stannard for participing in this public discourse - or symposium - I am greatful he did not beat me to a pulp when I told him I was the editor, so the final edit would be mine. Deal with it Socrates ;)

My favourite book of his is Postcards to Ma - buy a copy and support the poet! Thanks for reading, Charlie xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

厌倦了那些缪斯女神 / t i r e d o f t h e f e m a l e m u s e

厌倦了那些缪斯女神

厌倦了我诗歌中的那些缪斯女神

让我们假装我正沿着奚珍妮漫步 心跳 任由思绪闪烁到什么地方去 草莓找到了我

或者在田野里 或者在明尼苏达的豌豆们中间

或者在卡蒂萨克号的船舱里 我正倒立着用手指吃番茄汤

盐矿和盐矿博物馆，紧挨着

盐矿 等等！也许是盐矿紧挨着盐矿博物馆！

奚珍妮延伸到了董珍妮 街！

珍妮们不是什么女孩，而是街道的名字！伊丽莎白街是拉脱维亚最美丽的街道

让我们假装我正沿着缪斯女神往南走 哦不！我是说

沿着一条街往南走 想象一下：

我那些没有提到缪斯女神们的诗歌

在你想象的时候 我会去就业中心看看

给我的基因安上一个透明的补丁

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t i r e d o f t h e f e m a l e m u s e

tired of the female muse in my poetry

let's pretend i'm walking down jenny west    heartbeat

twinkling about something else    strawberries find me

in fields     in minnesotan peas    upside down in the cabins

of the cutty sark      eating tomato soup with my fingers

the salt mine and the salt mine museum attached to the

salt mine    wait! it's the other way round!

jenny west opens out onto jenny east    streets!

not the girls! elizabeth iela is prettiest street in latvia

let's pretend i'm heading south down the female muse    oops! i mean         

heading south down a street    imagine:

my poetry absent of a female muse

while you do that i will take a walk to the job centre

sew a see-through patch to my genes

__________________

Translated into Mandarin by Qizhu Zhao

Happy Chinese New Year! xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

first and last time in aux pres

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The poem is from Poesía masculina (La Bella Varsovia 2021). Support the poet & buy a copy.

My translation was commended in the 2024 Stephen Spender prize. Thank you to the judges Jennifer Wong & Taher Adeland.

Thank you also to Luna Miguel for permission to publish my translation, & for the deep well of inspiration that her interplay of genders brings to poetry.

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

my top ten poetry collections of 2024

Samia Halaby - Fold 2 1988

2024 was a great year for poetry, so much to choose from...below are my favourites, in no particular order...

Jemima Foxtrot - Treasure

Rachael Allen - God Complex

Aaron Kent & Stuart McPherson - All Empty Vessels

Danez Smith - Bluff

Síofra McSherry - Midnight Masses

Maria Sledmere - Midsummer Song

Ella Frears - Goodlord

Andrew Taylor - European Hymns

Diana Cant - I Make You Bird

Imtaz Dhaker - Shadow Reader

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Buy the books, support the poets!

Thanks for reading, see you in '25 Charlie xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

reviews of 'a fondness for the colour green'

Below are the reviews of my first collection of poetry 'a fondness for the colour green' collected under one roof...

Andreea Iulia Scridon - The London Magazine

https://thelondonmagazine.org/review-the-loneliness-of-a-sunday-afternoon-by-andreea-iulia-scridon/

Erik Kennedy - Review 31

http://review31.co.uk/article/view/922/a-hamburger-that-is-just-a-hamburger-flavoured-hamburger

Rupert Loydell - Litter Magazine

https://www.littermagazine.com/2023/07/review-fondness-for-colour-green-by.html

Jayd Green - Osmosis

https://osmosispress.com/2023/07/07/review-a-fondness-for-the-colour-green-by-charlie-baylis/

Mab Jones - Buzz Mag

https://www.buzzmag.co.uk/new-poetry-october-myfanwy-haycock-ellie-rees-review/

Daniel Roy Connelly - Lotus Eater Magazine

https://lotus-eatermagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/lotus_eater_issue_18-1.pdf

Mike Ferguson - Gravy from the Gazebo

https://gravyfromthegazebo.blog/2023/07/14/a-fondness-for-the-colour-green-by-charlie-baylis-broken-sleep-books/

Clark Allison - ZVONA i NARI​​

https://www.zvonainari.hr/single-post/clark-allison-unlike-anybody-else

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thank you to the reviewers for your time and careful consideration of my poetry xxx

p.s. if you'd like to buy a copy - i've sold around 3 so far...please!

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

write privaledge

image found in the budapest municple photo library

There came a point in Salomon Weise’s mesmeric burst onto the literary scene when he felt he had reached the peak of literary success, namely, receiving a blowjob from Phoebe Glass while studying the bookcase of an unnamed but more successful poet. In the library of the unnamed but more successful poet. In the seaside mansion of the unnamed but more successful poet.

Salomon made a mental note of the authors on the bookcase. Sarah Kane. Frank O’Hara. Jenny Erpenback. Salomon Weise. [own book deposited superciliously on the shelves]. He recorded the names partly out of boredom, partly on the lookout for more literary ideas to steal, and partly not sure what he really needed to do with his mind in the essentially passive act of receiving a blowjob. He trained his eyes thirty degrees, like a camera, and looked out of the large open bay window at the partygoers below.

Solomon Weise returned to the kitchen where he began scraping the insides out of a table full of samosas while telling Phobe Glass, who had followed him down the stairs, he was allergic to all foods, by which he meant: lactose intolerant, nut intolerant, shellfish, sulphate ridden, sugar overdone, terrific, sub-terrific, you name it. It. Phoebe clung to his every word. She had formed a genuine attachment to Solomon after a few dates at the zoo where he threw pandas at the pandas.

On reflection, at another tawdry launch of Peckham Wizards Fanzine, on an uncomfortable seat in the Southbank Centre, towards the back of the auditorium, as the unnamed but more successful poet read a poem about the lakes of Michigan for upwards of three hours straight. Eyes widened on and on down an ever narrowing lane. Wide. Narrow. Wide. Solomon thought to himself it could be better. Oh it could. Siamese twins with the same glorious dreams. He needed two Phoebe Glasses both equally pretty, both willing to perform sex act for his pleasure alone. At the same time. He texted Phoebe about his plan.

She never texted back.

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fan fiction based on Sam Riviere's Dead Souls.

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

My top ten poetry collections of 2023

(in no particular order...other than the order forgetful brain remembered the names and titles)

Mary Jean Chan - Bright Fear

Toby Martinez de las Rivas - Floodmeadow

Adrija Ghosh - The Commerce Between Tongues

Amy Acre - Mothersong

Jason Allen-Paisant - Self Portrait as Othello

Aaron Kent - The Working Classic

Maria Sledmere - An Aura of Plasma Around the Sun

Abigail Parry - I Think We're Alone Now

Jonathan Kinsman - The Fireman's Daughter

Joe Carrick-Varty - More Sky

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Buy them all - support the poets and presses ! xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

Close reading - Sean Bonney - Letter Against Sickness

Sean Bonney 1969-2019

Couldn't sleep again last night. Someone had paid for a couple of nights in a hotel, down by the coast, I've no idea why, or who, for that matter. I sat there for hours, nervous, watched the rolling news with the sound down, inventing my own dialogue like I used to do when I was a kid. Anyway, George Osborne came up, his little mouth moving at unpleasant angles and, weirdly, it occurred to me that I couldn't remember what his voice sounded like. Not sure why, I mean I've heard it often enough. So I thought I'd better plug this somewhat embarrassing hole in the centre of my knowledge: I turned the volume up and just as I did he was saying the words “our NHS”. The weight that pronoun carried was unbearable. Because Osborne, who presumably doesn't actually use the NHS, who probably has never sat in a waiting room in, say, the Whips Cross Hospital, was claiming some kind of possession that was entirely stolen, and claiming to share it with some kind of absolutely occupied “us”. It changed everything: the bland hotel room, the banal beating of the sea, all of it congealed into Osborne's pronunciation of “our”. There was a sickness to it that hung far outside the radius of any hospital. A vacant pestilence, or, if you like, a bricked up pestilence, and the “us”, which itself was some kind of shattered twitching mass left over from Osborne's thrusting invasion of “our”, this “us” was in hopeless distant orbit around this pestilence, some kind of arrangement of speckles in the night sky, a more or less orderly glyph, a surgical fracture in celestial time and, well, I guess you know what I mean. It did my head in. I changed channels and watched some kind of documentary about monsters fighting muscular people holding guns. But it was pretty boring, and the sun was starting to come up, so I thought I'd go out for a walk. And the first thing I saw, when I walked out the hotel door, was a seagull eating a pigeon. Serious. Right there in the middle of the road, tearing it to strips, swallowing the motherfucking thing. There was nobody around. Just the sea, some pebbles. And this peculiar compressed violence I was staring at. I couldn't move. I just stood there, staring, wishing I could reduce it down to some kind of metaphor, or analogy, or starting point for a bit of bourgeois literary criticism, something to add to my CV, anything, rabies, anything. The gull, the pebbles, pronouns, the rolling news, the sea, the muscular people, the dead thing, all of them forming into some kind of knot or eclipse. I thought about you at this point. I wondered which of them you would identify with. Which part would you take in this little horrorshow, which would be the marker of your position, which would be your representative on earth, which would be your signature. I ask because I really don't know which one I would be. I mean, if George Osborne was lying there in tatters in the middle of the road, right in front of the ridiculous sea, would I eat him? I'm sort of serious. If I walked out of the hotel and he was lying there, whimpering like a burning dog, what would I do? Shit, I was sweating by this point. I was no longer even a human being, just some glowing monster of anxieties and vicious isotopes, storms and circles. Revenge. Law. Decency. I think I puked. I felt I had become a tiny fissure in the decay chain set off by George Osborne's voice. One among countless disinterested scalpels, hanging there, in the grains of his voice. And those scalpels are us. Well, obviously not. But that's what he wants. That's what he thinks about each morning as he grimaces into his mirror. Anyway, I couldn't take it. I crossed the road and went down to the beach. I'm still here. I wrote you this letter, but I probably won't send it. If I do, do not answer it.

What is it?

Letter Against Sickness is an epistolary poem [a poem written as a letter]. Bonney began writing epistolary poems in response to the 2011 riots in London, when: “it seem[ed] a bit hokey to go home and write a poem after being involved in something like this.” He made the form very much his own in his final two collections of poetry: Letters Against the Firmament and Our Death. Letter Against Sickness is featured in the former and is one of a cluster of letter-bombs which savage Tory politicians in black, vitriolic, star-dipped language “with the dilated pupils of someone who has not slept all night”.

The poem begins with Bonney in a hotel room watching the then chancellor George Osborne on TV. Bonney turns on the sound just as Osborne snakily mutters ‘our NHS’. The pronoun infuriates Bonney. Osborne, as Bonney mentions: ‘presumably doesn't actually use the NHS’. Osborne’s cynical appropriation of public healthcare represents a theft, ‘possession that was entirely stolen’ that causes Bonney’s head to spin. Bonney exits the hotel room only to be confronted by the central image of the poem, a seagull ripping apart a pigeon. This image carries the obvious symbolism of Osborne tearing apart the poor, the welfare state, the NHS etc but Bonney interestingly sidesteps this interpretation, and instead questions whether it could be he himself who is the seagull tearing apart the lowly pigeon that is George Gideon Oliver Osborne.

This idea haunts Bonney and leads him to go down to the beach and write the Letter Against Sickness. The central image is brilliant not only because it is violent and visceral but also due to the way Bonney leaves its interpretation open-ended. If Bonney is the seagull not the pigeon, who actually has the power? The seagull eating the pigeon can be seen as a metaphor for the poem itself, where Bonney uses language to destroy his prey. This is uplifting because it shows Bonney as victorious, and though grim reality might suggest otherwise, I am certain that in mysterious dimensions, in time still unknown, Sean Bonney won the fight.

Why does it work?

In moments of defeat, revolution tumbles back into poetics, just as in moments of insurrection—as Rimbaud, as the Surrealists and as the Situationists knew—the energies concealed in poetics explode outwards into revolution. Revolution doesn’t become poetic, poetry shatters itself in the process of becoming revolutionary.

At that moment, as visionary as he was, Bonney would not have known the Conservatives would lurch on in power for a decade and counting, methodically ripping apart the social fabric of the country, isolating it from the international community and creating a wonderful place for the super-rich and a horrible place for everyone else. Bonney’s Letter Against Sickness is a great poem because it is necessary. The necessity of the poem hasn’t diminished over time, instead the need for a dissenting voice has become ever more urgent.

Bonney’s poem works because his writing has a magnificent internal energy, explosive and propulsive, like the nucleus of a star. His language is dark and violent with a compelling malice and a strong hint that something is not quite right with the author. This self-hatred would become ever more lacerating in his final collection Our Death. Bonney was always very aware of the power of language, he was critical of protest march slogans for their weakness, Letter Against Sickness follows his above mentioned prescription to ‘shatter itself in the process of becoming revolutionary’. It is an urgent poem and very unlike any other political poetry, past or present in terms of its form, the autobiographical elements and the way it directly challenges its target.

Returning to the central image, whatever conclusion we draw from the fluctuating resonances of the metaphor, whatever the power structures hinted at, there is perhaps a deeper point. This is a shocking act of violence unfolding right before Bonney’s sleep deprived eyes. Bonney is entreating the reader not to turn their back on violent events they are confronted with. Letter Against Sickness is focused and embittered rage, it is the arrow thwacking the target, it is a poem destined to be remembered as an important note of dissension in a time of great social upheaval. ‘Fight them back’ wrote Bonney, and his poetry is the glorious document of that fight.

_________________

I've used the version of Letter Against Sickness on Sean Bonney's Blog, which has a few small differences to the poem as it appears in Letters Against the Firmament

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

Close reading - HLR - This Is Love Like

What is it?

This is love like is a prose-poem in list form where HLR wields the euphoria of a powerful emotion, love, to construct and leap off a cliff of ever more extravagant images. The images are carefully constructed to stimulate the readers senses, with lots of allusions to taste and physical sensations. However, unlike the two eminent purveyors of the “extravagant image poem” Chelsey Minnis and Hera Lindsay Bird, HLR grounds her poem in place. HLR is proudly North London, so we witness the speaker: “waking up on Turnpike Lane with two black eyes”, “swimming from London to Mexico” and, as if by magic: “taking LSD & meeting the ghost of Keats on Hampstead Heath”.

The poem has a ring of authenticity. The addition of place contextualises the poem, bringing reality in and humanising the speaker. The speaker of the poem also arouses sympathy [pathos] with the many hilarious and occasionally violent details: the lemon juice sucked up from paper-cuts, the Carol Anne Duffy collection thrown at her, the marriage proposal in the frozen aisle of Tesco. Almost all of the sentences contain two clauses connect by an ampersand, they are all [probably] based on true events, they are often clashing [bathos], they are what Stephen J. Golds describes as “juxtapositions of tenderness and brutality���. The reader can’t help but fall in love with her.

Why does it work?

Love, accurately described, is a nirvana the poet can only dream of reaching, otherwise the words ‘Game Over’ would glaze over their eyes, they’d down pens and go and work in Budgens. In This is Love Like HLR sets herself an impossible task, the task of finding the right words to describe the love she is feeling, this striving for the impossible is the force which drives the poem, it is where the extravagant imagery is born, in the deep vaults of a romantic imagination. The poem is vivid, adventurous and bounces with bravado, the speaker’s hedonism is presented to the reader along with its darker edges.

Nearly every sentence in This is Love Like begins with like. This feels a little rebellious, it’s not what they teach on a creative writing MA, but the technique works. The repeated likes create a verbal tic, an accumulation of sound which drives the poem forward, as it builds and builds towards crescendo: “this is love like a death. A glorious death. The most magnificent. The absolute worst. Excruciating.” HLR’s prose-poem is an intense joy-ride of exquisitely specific symbolism which attempts to define the indefinable, it succeeds through the power and variety of the imagery mixed with a little sprinkle of rhetorical stardust.

Fun facts about HLR

HLR is an Aries. She has a black and white cat called Ludo. She is five feet and three inches and left handed.

HLR received a First in English Literature from Royal Holloway and now works as an editor for a media publishing company.

HLR’s hobbies outside of poetry are Arsenal football club, going to the gym and playing with her cat.

HLR’s favourite food is broccoli (especially with salmon and hollandaise sauce). Her favourite colour is purple (all the shades) and her favourite film is Badlands.

_________________

This Is Love Like is from HLR's new pamphlet Ex-cetera.

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

All the love in the world and then a little bit more

The world is a blue blue blur. For breakfast yoghurt, honey, blueberries. My lover is in the bathtub. I climb in beside her and stroke her gently between her thighs. She purrs. I tap the water and it changes; hot pink, scarlet, ebony, sky blue.

In every stable there is an abandoned horse. A blue horse. The horse is made up of pieces of the other horses. I don’t get it. Do you?

My lover kisses me in a clock exhibition, puts her hands in my pockets. I wake up in Slovenia. I keep asking people for the time. I knew what the time is.

All poems must be abandoned before they begin. Especially this poem. What do you know about time? I met my lover in a clock museum. There are disputable facts. There are indisputable facts.

We were fucking in the kitchen when a Jehovah's Witness rang the doorbell. He told me...

Hold out your right hand. Here is all the love in the world.

He told me...

Hold out your left hand. Here is all the love in the world and a little bit more.

The cool children in the rain. The inevitable seep of madness. Haunted ephemera. Violet nights in Ljubljana. An abandoned horse. A melting fireman. A memory of sound.

God bless you.

__________

Thank you to HLR for the photo and for her editorial suggestions xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

a fondness for the colour green

my first poetry collection 'a fondness for the colour green' is for sale.

thank you to the publisher broken sleep books and to everyone who has helped me on the way to publication.

if you'd like to buy a personilised copy, drop me an email [charlie _ baylis @ msn . com]

i can post to anywhere in the world.

peace xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

luna miguel - i have 50 000 euros in the bank

i have 50 000 euros in the bank

when the figure turned around i’d turn around with her i’d pull out a megaphone as if by magic and scream to that skinny boy collecting dust on the dumbbells of ciudad real decathlon to focus on everything acquired on everything that had changed since he painted trains fucked minors took exams with that bubble bag of hash hidden in baggy pants in case it went wrong or just in case it turned out ok and fifty k had to be celebrated how do you stay a brat how many bus tickets to tomelloso how many illegal downloads of nordic rap loser look at you how you've changed before you admired men before you wanted to be like uncle pepe but then they found his rotten corpse before you loved kase o but then he got sad and old before you admired david foster wallace but you will never write a thousand page novel beyond that is fifty thousand euros of your sweat and from your forehead,          grainy boy with brown shoes, what do you think of me? you who have been searching all your life for a man                                                       to copy and it turns out the chosen one was none of those you imagined but yourself, are you really yourself?


________________ 


tengo 50 000 euros en el banco

cuando la cifra diera la vuelta daría la vuelta con ella sacaría un megáfone como pur arte de magia y gritaría a ese chico enclenque que acumulaba polvo en las mancuernas de decathlon de ciudad real que se fijara en todo lo que había conseguido en todo lo que había cambiado desde que pintaba trenes follaba con menores hacía exámenes con esa malla de hachís escondida en el ancho pantalón por si acaso salía mal o por si acaso salía bien y había que celebrarlo cincuenta mil pavos cómo te quedas criajo cuántos billetes de autobús a tomelloso son eso cuántas descargas ilegales de rap nórdico pringao mírate cómo has cambiado antes admirabas a los hombres antes querías ser como el tío pepe pero luego encontraron su cadáver descompuesto antes amabas a kase o pero luego se volvío cursi y viejo antes admirabas a david foster wallace pero tú nunca escribirás una novela de mil páginas qué más da eso ahora son cincuenta mil euros de tu sudor y de tu frente chaval granoso de zapatos marrones qué te parezco ahora tú que llevas toda la vida buscando un hombre al que imitar y resulta que el elegido no era niguno de los que creíste                    sino tú mismo ¿de verdad que eres tú mismo?                                                                                                             

_____________

This poem is from Poesía masculina (La Bella Varsovia 2021)

Thank you to Luna Miguel for permission to publish my translation.

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

5 questions with Nii Ayikwei Parkes

Why do you write?

This is an odd question for me, because I don't think I've ever not told stories. I think writing is a vital part of my conversation with the world, it's one of the ways I make sense of things. So, perhaps I write so I can be less foolish.

Azúcar has elements of magical realism, for example, the fictional island of Fumaz and the Soñada family tree bring to mind Márquez’s creation of the Macondo and the Buendía family in 100 Years of Solitude. Have you been inspired by the genre? How has it informed your own storytelling?

I have an aversion to the name of 'magical realism', but I have absolutely been inspired by the work of Vargas Llosa, Garcia Márquez, Fuentes - as well as African writers such as Mongo Beti and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, whose work leans on satire. Reading Latin American fiction in translation, the way they owned and moulded the Spanish language to their cultural experience of the world, pointed me to greater possibilities in my use of the English language, which I had been taught to use in very rigid ways. Azúcar is partly a thank you note for those language lessons.

A large part of your writing focuses on women and girls not only your experiences, but the collective feminine experience, which you describe with empathy even while writing about a time when, as you say in Azúcar, “a woman hid her true powers”. Would you agree the feminine experience is a significant aspect of your work, and if so, how have you come to think about it with such a heightened sensitivity?

The odd thing is everyone's first experience of the world is through women, but I never really thought about women's experience as distinct until I read So Long a Letter by Mariama Bâ at the age of 12 or 13. I mean, that's the power of privilege; when you have it, you can't see the world as anything but complete. Once I began to see from the additional perspective that reading that book gave me (a West African woman's perspective), I couldn't experience the world without that filter. The time I had always spent in the company of women and girls suddenly became revelatory. My mother was a midwife so we had women coming to our home for advice all the time, and I just soaked it all in with the fervent commitment of a seasoned eavesdropper. I think the accumulated experience of over three decades of listening is what gives the sense of the feminine experience in my work. However, I would argue that it is not significant; it is as it should be, but we have largely learned to read without expecting it, so it stands out when it is simply present.

A lot of your poetry, for example, your collections The Makings of You and The Geez, cover a family history that moves from the Caribbean to Sierra Leone, and your own life between London and Ghana. Is it hard to write about this cultural experience while engaging a wider audience who may not have a similar background?

I really don't obsess over the journey of the audience; I trust that if I render any story with true honesty and vulnerability, then a human audience will be engaged (in ways that I can't predict). Ultimately, how similar are backgrounds? We receive stories according to our interior landscape, and those can differ wildly even amongst people who have grown up in the same exterior circumstances - cases in point would be the adult versus child experience of the same war, or the masculine versus feminine experience of the same space.

Charlie Parker or Charles Mingus? Robert Johnson or Lead Belly?

Oooh, the first option isn't even fair - completely different expressive outlets, but both genius. Robert Johnson over Lead Belly though, just because I like when a story has gaps, leaving space for my imagination to inhabit. I think Lead Belly is a more accomplished storyteller, but Johnson makes you feel an incredible range of emotions and his guitar technique is stunning.

__________________

Buy a Copy of Azúcar from Peepal Tree Press

Thank you to Lila Bovenzi for her help with the questions.

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

invitation to trip

      charles baudelaire

a sublime country, a catholic country, they say i dream of tripping with my friend, strange country, drained by northern mist, the east in the west, china in europe. its liberty given by such tender and excessive imagination, wise and delicate plants.

a country stacked, where all is beautiful, rich, calm, honest, where luxury gazes happily into order. where life is fat and honey sweet, everything exists on the expected, without turbulence or disorder. joy weds silence, even the food is poetic. everything which looks at you looks like you.

have you known the illness that takes us over in misery? nostalgia for a land you’ve never been? the anguish of curiosity? the land mirrors your skin: all is beautiful, rich, calm, honest, fantasy has built and decorated a western china, joy weds silence, in a country made for us to live, a country made for us to die.

right – you’ve got to go there to breath,  dream, elongate the hours with the infinity of sensation. a composer wrote ‘invitation to waltz’ but who will write the invitation to trip? which could be offered to the woman you love, my sister, my prettiest whore.

right - this is the atmosphere where it’d be ok to live, there, where the slower hours contain more thoughts. where the clock strikes happiness with a deeper and more resonant solemnity.

on illuminations, or on golden and dark rich leather, peaceful paintings live calmly, like the souls of the artists who painted them. setting suns colour the room with such a rich light, and are sieved by beautiful fabrics or tall ornate windows, which the lead compartmentalizes. the furniture is vast, strange, and bizarre, armed with secrets like complicated souls. mirror, metal, fabric, golden trinkets and clay play a silent and mysterious symphony for the eyes, and from everything, from every corner, from the chink in the drawer, from the fold in the curtain, a unique perfume escapes, a return to sumatra, like the soul of the apartment.

i tell you its a really heavy place, where everything is rich, clean and shines, like a beautiful conscience, like a magnificent saucepan, shines like a set of sublime golden ornaments, or a colourful ruby, the treasures of the world flow, as in the man who worked so hard he deserved all the well of the world.

let them search, search again, let them and push out the boundaries of happiness, like an alchemist designing flowers, let them offer me a billion euros for the solution to an unsolvable problem. me, i found my black tulip and blue dahlia.

incomparable flower, rediscovered tulip, allegorical dahlia. it’s there, isn’t it? in this calm and dreamy land, a life in flowers, mirrored, as if speaking like a mystic, by your own correspondence.

dreams – always dreams– the more ambitious and delicate the soul is, the more the dreams steal it from the possible. everyone carries with them their dose of natural opium, instantly potent and reborn, furthermore from birth to death, how many hours of our lives do we spend in positive frames of mind? in successful and determined actions? when will we pass through the portrait that my sensitivity has painted, the one that looks like you?

these treasures: this furniture, this luxury, this order, these perfumes, these miracle flowers, it is you. it is you again, in the vast rivers and quiet canals, these enormous ships carry you, all heaving with wealth, you are the music of sailors, you are the thoughts that sleep or roll on your chest. you carry your thoughts gently to the infinite sea, while reflecting the deep sky in the purity of your beautiful soul, and when exhausted by swell of the tide, and sated by the luxuries of the orient, your thoughts will return to their native port, like my thoughts, grown rich, that have returned to you from infinity.

------------------------ L’INVITATION AU VOYAGE

"Il est un pays superbe, un pays de Cocagne, dit-on, que je rêve de visiter avec une vieille amie. Pays singulier, noyé dans les brumes de notre Nord, et qu’on pourrait appeler l’Orient de l’Occident, la Chine de l’Europe, tant la chaude et capricieuse fantaisie s’y est donné carrière, tant elle l’a patiemment et opiniâtrement illustré de ses savantes et délicates végétations.

Un vrai pays de Cocagne, où tout est beau, riche, tranquille, honnête ; où le luxe a plaisir à se mirer dans l’ordre ; où la vie est grasse et douce à respirer ; d’où le désordre, la turbulence et l’imprévu sont exclus ; où le bonheur est marié au silence ; où la cuisine elle-même est poétique, grasse et excitante à la fois ; où tout vous ressemble, mon cher ange.

Tu connais cette maladie fiévreuse qui s’empare de nous dans les froides misères, cette nostalgie du pays qu’on ignore, cette angoisse de la curiosité ? Il est une contrée qui te ressemble, où tout est beau, riche, tranquille et honnête, où la fantaisie a bâti et décoré une Chine occidentale, où la vie est douce à respirer, où le bonheur est marié au silence. C’est là qu’il faut aller vivre, c’est là qu’il faut aller mourir !

Oui, c’est là qu’il faut aller respirer, rêver et allonger les heures par l’infini des sensations. Un musicien a écrit l’Invitation à la valse ; quel est celui qui composera l’Invitation au voyage, qu’on puisse offrir à la femme aimée, à la sœur d’élection ?

Oui, c’est dans cette atmosphère qu’il ferait bon vivre, — là-bas, où les heures plus lentes contiennent plus de pensées, où les horloges sonnent le bonheur avec une plus profonde et plus significative solennité.

Sur des panneaux luisants, ou sur des cuirs dorés et d’une richesse sombre, vivent discrètement des peintures béates, calmes et profondes, comme les âmes des artistes qui les créèrent. Les soleils couchants, qui colorent si richement la salle à manger ou le salon, sont tamisés par de belles étoffes ou par ces hautes fenêtres ouvragées que le plomb divise en nombreux compartiments. Les meubles sont vastes, curieux, bizarres, armés de serrures et de secrets comme des âmes raffinées. Les miroirs, les métaux, les étoffes, l’orfèvrerie et la faïence y jouent pour les yeux une symphonie muette et mystérieuse ; et de toutes choses, de tous les coins, des fissures des tiroirs et des plis des étoffes s’échappe un parfum singulier, un revenez-y de Sumatra, qui est comme l’âme de l’appartement.

Un vrai pays de Cocagne, te dis-je, où tout est riche, propre et luisant, comme une belle conscience, comme  une magnifique batterie de cuisine, comme une splendide orfèvrerie, comme une bijouterie bariolée ! Les trésors du monde y affluent, comme dans la maison d’un homme laborieux et qui a bien mérité du monde entier. Pays singulier, supérieur aux autres, comme l’Art l’est à la Nature, où celle-ci est réformée par le rêve, où elle est corrigée, embellie, refondue.

Qu’ils cherchent, qu’ils cherchent encore, qu’ils reculent sans cesse les limites de leur bonheur, ces alchimistes de l’horticulture ! Qu’ils proposent des prix de soixante et de cent mille florins pour qui résoudra leurs ambitieux problèmes ! Moi, j’ai trouvé ma tulipe noire et mon dahlia bleu !

Fleur incomparable, tulipe retrouvée, allégorique dahlia, c’est là, n’est-ce pas, dans ce beau pays si calme et si rêveur, qu’il faudrait aller vivre et fleurir ? Ne serais-tu pas encadrée dans ton analogie, et ne pourrais-tu pas te mirer, pour parler comme les mystiques, dans ta propre correspondance ?

Des rêves ! toujours des rêves ! et plus l’âme est ambitieuse et délicate, plus les rêves l’éloignent du possible. Chaque homme porte en lui sa dose d’opium naturel, incessamment sécrétée et renouvelée, et, de la naissance à la mort, combien comptons-nous d’heures remplies par la jouissance positive, par l’action réussie et décidée ? Vivrons-nous jamais, passerons-nous jamais dans ce tableau qu’a peint mon esprit, ce tableau qui te ressemble ?

Ces trésors, ces meubles, ce luxe, cet ordre, ces  parfums, ces fleurs miraculeuses, c’est toi. C’est encore toi, ces grands fleuves et ces canaux tranquilles. Ces énormes navires qu’ils charrient, tout chargés de richesses, et d’où montent les chants monotones de la manœuvre, ce sont mes pensées qui dorment ou qui roulent sur ton sein. Tu les conduis doucement vers la mer qui est l’Infini, tout en réfléchissant les profondeurs du ciel dans la limpidité de ta belle âme ; — et quand, fatigués par la houle et gorgés des produits de l’Orient, ils rentrent au port natal, ce sont encore mes pensées enrichies qui reviennent de l’infini vers toi."

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

already!

already, a hundred times already, the sun jumped, radiant or melancholic, from the sea’s infinite lips, its almost invisible edges; a hundred times the sun sank again, glittering or sombre, into a vast bath of evening. we gazed at the underside of the firmament, decoding the celestial alphabet of opposites.

all the passengers pissed and moaned. one told me the oncoming land only intensified his suffering. "when," he said, "will we stop dreaming through dreams broken by waves, sickened by the wind roaring round our heads. when will we recline in motionless chairs?”

some passengers remembered home, regretting their bitter, cheating wives and bastard children. everyone was so afraid of the disappearing earth, they would have chewed grass with more enthusiasm than cows.

we spotted an island, on approaching we saw it was a magnificent, dazzling land. it seemed as though the music of life lifted from the sands in a wavy murmur; and the coast, rich with a variety of plants, breathed a mellifluous aroma of flowers and fruits.

everyone went crazy; bad moods slipped away into the waves. fights were forgotten, wrongs forgiven, the thought of revenge was washed away, all tedious grudges spiralled away like smoke.

i alone was sad, inconceivably sad, a priest whose divinity is ripped from him, i could not, without bitter heartbreak, leave such a monstrously seductive sea, a sea so infinitely varied in its terrifying simplicity, it seemed to hold within itself and represent in its games, gaits, angers and smiles, the moods and torments and ecstasies of all the souls who have lived, who are living, who will one day live.

waving goodbye to this incomparable beauty, i felt i had been bludgeoned to death; and so, when the passengers all cried: "finally!" i could only cry “already!”

however, it was the land. the land with its noises, its passions, its comforts,, its festivals: a land rich and magnificent, full of promise, that sent us a mysterious aroma of rose and musk, from which the music of life flowed to us in a loving whisper.

….

Cent fois déjà le soleil avait jailli, radieux ou attristé, de cette cuve immense de la mer dont les bords ne se laissent qu’à peine apercevoir ; cent fois il s’était replongé, étincelant ou morose, dans son immense bain du soir. Depuis nombre de jours, nous pouvions contempler l’autre côté du firmament et déchiffrer l’alphabet céleste des antipodes. Et chacun des passagers gémissait et grognait. On eût dit que l’approche de la terre exaspérait leur souffrance. « Quand donc », disaient-ils, « cesserons-nous de dormir un sommeil secoué par la lame, troublé par un vent qui ronfle plus haut que nous ? Quand pourrons-nous digérer dans un fauteuil immobile ? »

Il y en avait qui pensaient à leur foyer, qui regrettaient leurs femmes infidèles et maussades, et leur progéniture criarde. Tous étaient si affolés par l’image de la terre absente, qu’ils auraient, je crois, mangé de l’herbe avec plus d’enthousiasme que les bêtes.

Enfin un rivage fut signalé ; et nous vîmes, en approchant, que c’était une terre magnifique, éblouissante. Il semblait que les musiques de la vie s’en détachaient en un vague murmure, et que de ces côtes, riches en verdures de toute sorte, s’exhalait, jusqu’à plusieurs lieues, une délicieuse odeur de fleurs et de fruits.

Aussitôt chacun fut joyeux, chacun abdiqua sa mauvaise humeur. Toutes les querelles furent oubliées, tous les torts réciproques pardonnés ; les duels convenus furent rayés de la mémoire, et les rancunes s’envolèrent comme des fumées.

Moi seul j’étais triste, inconcevablement triste. Semblable à un prêtre à qui on arracherait sa divinité, je ne pouvais, sans une navrante amertume, me détacher de cette mer si monstrueusement séduisante, de cette mer si infiniment variée dans son effrayante simplicité, et qui semble contenir en elle et représenter par ses jeux, ses allures, ses colères et ses sourires, les humeurs, les agonies et les extases de toutes les âmes qui ont vécu, qui vivent et qui vivront !

En disant adieu à cette incomparable beauté, je me sentais abattu jusqu’à la mort ; et c’est pourquoi, quand chacun de mes compagnons dit : « Enfin ! » je ne pus crier que : « Déjà ! »

Cependant c’était la terre, la terre avec ses bruits, ses passions, ses commodités, ses fêtes ; c’était une terre riche et magnifique, pleine de promesses, qui nous envoyait un mystérieux parfum de rose et de musc, et d’où les musiques de la vie nous arrivaient en un amoureux murmure.

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

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