lo-fi frags in-progress

Fresh from Veer Books.

Please buy HERE.

or via Amazonian monstrosity, if you must.

 

another one arrives

Right. So here's the newest one. Thirty-odd pages. Is part of a backburner project that's been going for a few years. I had the opportunity to focus on it a little more a few months ago during a wonderful residency at incredible arts mania centre, The Guesthouse, in Cork. The residency was set up as a part of SoundEye 2014, and I was extremely honoured to be their first writer in residence. I played around with a lot of different materials, beginning with piles of pins in ink thrown onto white pages. Which did not work. It was hideous. But onwards! 

I delved into the LFTT Library that had been set up by Helen Horgan in the gallery space below my workspace: books of Victorian parlour tricks, economics, Hegelian tracts, entomological dictionaries, weird priestly Catholic stuff - it all ended up in a xerox flurry that was guided by the grandiose image of tiny pins on the noble £20 note. Words and scissors and ideas and pages and pages of notes began to seep into existing parts of the project; most of it is still in a large envelope waiting for its turn to be patched into the monstrosity, which is concerned with labour in general. Or, I think it is. It is full and empty of fear and blasting. Piranesi and Bentham haunt the corridors and rooms where swarms of legs and hands make, get angry, prepare rebellion, get scared, get defeated, make, get angry, threaten explosion, implode - the contradictions, the confusions, the et ceteras and the cabbaging of said et ceteras. 

Moving along, England is the angerzone of Marx but that's in secret lines. It's worse than an angerzone now. And then bloodstains being the ones I've found in hems of clothing I've bought: hands caught in machines, hands as insects, hands as feet, pins in all the faces, chairs (my irrational fear of) as (rational hatred of) Chairs. Blood on the Chair. Nits or spiders that --- spiders can't be trusted. What is their logic. Why is there a nighthowler in my parlour. What exactly is. Something like that. And then there's Acker and what she started, and Tàpies, and then the floating idea that there is no weaving without holes and gaps in space and material. Thoughts regarding matchstick girls are present, and the prisoners of the Walthamstow workhouse, and the toy factories (also of Walthamstow) that were shut down in the 80s and suffrage and suffering and what happens to spaces. Or wait. I have a line about talking toys somewhere; it's still an unborn poem, another bit of compositional cobweb that thickens and clouds my perceptions in a most productive way but has not necessarily arrived on the page. It will emerge as the project grows. 

 (No wait. Actually, I will forget about Walthamstow because it is stained with the feces of gentrifying, racist cupcake fascists who think there are too many fried chicken shops that attract too many kids and make the neighbourhood look cheap and undesirable to live in. Unless it's Nando's. Nando's is respectable fried chicken for three times the price, and it comes with tasteful music and nice lighting. In fact, a Nando's just opened at the foot of the newly-constructed Palace of Mediocrity for The Monied that towers over the station. Chicken livers and a Portugese roll for £6.10?! Who are they kidding? People who never go to the butchers, where you can buy chicken livers for pennies, that's who. People who are afraid of spending too little money because it makes them look bad to their fellow cupcake fascists. People who are afraid of people who regularly spend very little money as a part of daily life. Let's face it, the real reason the glut of non-Nando's fried chicken shops in the neighbourhood is a problem to the yuppies is that the, well, the "wrong" kind of people hang out there. Who manage to actually have a great, non-Nando's time, of which the Nandian Butter Frosting Invaders are jealous.) End rant.

Back to how I shall not include the area where I live, but its products. And forget the rest of the showy name-dropping. It didn't happen. I'm not particularly smart but I'm good at faking it. All this is but a few tiny shards of pale glimmers in PIN. Don't go being reductive just because of a few drops of secret knowledgespittle are splashing your shoes as I vomit various bits of venom and some of the sharp objects my body has rejected into this rather sloppy sales pitch. I will keep spitting them. 

You don't have to buy it but I made it and we all have hands so let's do this. Let's make some cheezy remarks about exchange and value and whatnot as you provide the funds and I provide the poems. I've been putting on weight despite no money, but that's because I'm depressed. Make me happy. I'll get fit for work! 
If you'll be seeing me in person at any time in the tiny bit of future this world has left, we can do a fair trade agreement then, one hand to another. And if not, if you are many, many kilometres away, in the non-Londons or in distant lands then of course I will happily entrust it to the hands of the postal services! Buybuybuy.

Sean Bonney

More available to see, alongside poetry, at abandonedbuildings.

collage by Borthwick

okay - two steps out of many, but you get the idea

shape cutting and trimming

dyed and fitted with snap

grrrr

If you put any of these on, your knuckles will immediately fly towards the nearest face. Which may be your own.

nice n simple

Felines

There was a time when I drew loads of pictures of my cats in various media and different sizes from small to smaller and put them into all sorts of little frames and they were all in different styles...and the project was called DORIS LOVES HENRY, because those are the names of my cats, even though Doris never did love Henry. Until he died last year, after which time it became very clear how important he actually was to her.

The DORIS LOVES HENRY project was a financial failure. I tried selling these little pix at different craft markets, but to no avail. I think I might have sold three since I first made them back in 2008-2009. 

Cat lovers are, for the most part, disgusted by dismembered mice and dying birds, which is what was going on in a lot of these pix. And generally, cat lovers tend to prefer soft lighting and gentle pastel colours in cat/kitten art, while abstracted cats in scribbled gardens also just don't (or didn't) go down very well. So I began giving them away to friends and family who I knew would actually appreciate them, because they either a) have a sense of humour, b) truly love cats in all shapes and forms and colours and sizes, c) understand how ridiculous they are, and d) understand how bloody and vicious they can be. 

I still got a pile of these lovely objets around, and I'll have them out when I open the doors during the E17 Art Trail. They are all, you may notice, signed "KK", because when I first made them it was under the pseudonym Karolina Królik. I have no idea why I chose to be a Polish rabbit called Karolina, but hey, I'd just had my first bit of brain damage at the time, plus I had somehow ended up leaving London to live in St Leonards on Sea. Really, the latter is the stronger excuse. A lot of strange things happened there. Like the first time I saw UFOs, and which a fleet of police helicopters went chasing, although it turned out they were just those orange floating lanterns. But still.  

blue (56" x 31")

crouch (12" x 9")

crawl (12" x 9")

Sharon Borthwick's Merz-like built painting

E17 Art Trail

Aha! Welcome to the E17 Art Trail crawlers.

You may notice that I have been not terribly active on this blog. Once upon a time I wrote on it constantly, then proceeded to delete the contents and start again with a few pix of new werx (now old-ish). And then I basically stopped again and focused on the new blogs in my life. And my life in general. And thennnn I reinvented myself and made some more stuff under the moniker neon cabbage roll. Some may call me fickle. To that I reply that I Do Many Things But I Lose Track And Get Distracted.

I shall attempt to add a little somethin' here from myself and my fellow exhibitors every day. I suppose I should also get around to reviving the yt communication page, a micropress project that I ran way back in the day. Again, I stopped that one and deleted the page (no point searching for it right now - sorry), but it will necessarily rise again because I went ahead and put out a wee book under that imprint...

In the meantime, I have been hellishly busy with organisational and curatorial stuff, from which I am currently and hellishly recuperating. So I shall begin this little post with the posters I made for the London Poetry Festival. I was mostly responsible for pulling together the exhibition (with a few pairs of helping hands):

 

time...

A lot of it has passed since I last posted here in the heart of the blackest fluid, the most noxious of semi-solids, the darkest of mucoused matter. The dark mucus blog. It's been long enough that I forgot my password and it took some hassle to get that sorted out today. So, this might be an occasion to turn that around, to visit this space a bit more, to reach out and share the stickiness again. Perhaps, hmmmm?

At the very least, I need to force my work down people's throats a little more, force them into becoming my benefactors, for I have come to a point where there is no longer any financial support available for me: I'm basically unemployable, and the money wolves have their teeth in my ankles, they want their money back, I'm running as fast as I can to escape them, but they've got me, like they've got everybody else, and I owe them so much fucking money that my only solution for the short term is to sell stuff, and the first things to go are my words, so buy a book and let's get things rolling so that I can, at the least, afford tube fare and vegetables until some office finally decides to let me in and offers me a further pittance.

I hereby introduce you to my newest little darling, my little nasty collection:

That's right. I've revived yt communication (at least temporarily?), which I had initially quit because it was far too much work to keep up, but now that I'm working hard at having no work, I might as well keep myself busy. Debuting in Germany last week, DWARF SURGE (or, dwarf surge, on certain copies, because there were only so many capital W's available in the limited number of dry-transfer lettering sheets I had on hand) has come into the world in a screaming bloody mess. It contains poems that will appear as part of a Veer book sometime next year. And a number of them are also already at The Claudius App, but wouldn't you love to hold your very own creamy card hand-sewn version in your hands? I think so. And I would love to send one to you, so I invite you to come on down to the little button on the right-hand side of this page (or see me in person) and indulge yourself in what may be shoddy handiwork, but is nice enough to look at and pretty fun to read and get confused by. This is my trade, words are my labour, and the world needs freakish words for hideous times.

 

So please, buy my book. It has 28 pages, it looks not bad, it reads not bad, and I will be forever grateful to you for your support.

xofk

P.S. I'm on the lookout for a guillotine, because I'm tired of hand-cutting everything. And somebody stole my long-armed stapler, and I know who you are, so come forward with it already. I am not amused. You've had it for years.

and now

The absolutely gorgeous edition of Down you go as made by Richard Owens is pretty much disappeared. If you're lucky there might be a fewwww more available at the little launchy festivity planned for October. That's right. Oktoberfest belongs to me this year.

It also belongs to Francis Crot. Get his HAX at Punch Press while you can. It is stunning in every way.

More details to come. Prepare your poetic lederhosen for HAXbruit 2011.

Novelty

I have a new book:

Down you go, or, Négation de bruit

loving assembled by Richard Owens
at

Punch Press

You should buy a copy. It looks purdy.

what about the Chair thinks
it’s a spine pathetically mimetic and all
empty we are sure a demon fills it
when it sits there middle-roomed
solitary. creaks
for protection the Chair should
be occupied at all times suffocated
by the body colonial
and the body may stay
and the body keeps guard
and the body makes lethargy ok
in the name of filling the Chair
forever and ever, it
etc.,

The Eleventh Month

At the sitroom blog you will find the informations for November's weekly information sessions. Readings, performances, things to look at, &c.

Girls! Girls! Girls!

There is a schedule of events here.

take this worthless concoction with you

for there would be no problem if i had a body

jelly for the day

KRANG

Voicewerx

My collaboration with Nick Scott and Lucy Hall will be performed tomorrow (Thursday 20 May) at Wigmore Hall. Our piece is called "Beige House".

It is meant to be live-streamed online, so if you can't make it to the Wigmore in person (it's a free concert), then you should be able to view it on the Voiceworks website, which is still under construction but should be functioning for the performance tomorrow.

SoundEye 2009

some information about the forthcoming festivities in Cork City this july.

foolsday scrape for change

The trial and execution by beheading of CAPITALISM featuring the Final Repentance of the Accused for Crimes against the Planet.

at 11am they ride

for lunch at the bank
cake & brains & glass
:
red from moorgate
green from liverpool street
silver from london bridge
black from cannon street

from naturalised state of emergency

that hell quack boot stomp again
kitchen shakes sprays filth water & cat parts what. What
what is the end Of rolled bubbles, shot eyes, every sharp-slip in the sink
hideous, calm.
what object wants to always fly. what's the biggest angry. what's the most Hurricane yes roll again the tantrum for what. there was no sound - what
should have been known



*



hears & thinks I have spoken
something other than gangrene I
say my lips are peeling & it hurts
to tear the skin. simple rot is
this the utopian sweetbreath the
ladyfighter must ooze or else
could it be! she is only her & what
is without is without is why it hurts
to Say, what am I to say beyond the head
"Drink this & be saved



*



for while I sleep
at bones the slathered pillowcase
my greasy habit hell be silent
for the salt. one drip, two
for wet spots on the nice wall
my shake is quiet, the wound sound
I have no hate I have no hate
I'm sugar with an angel's zero mouth



*



then sleeping among heads, buildings, things. I came here to - but my lungs are Twitched these days & there I choke & leak, rattle, toothgrind with 3,467 skeletons
behind the fridge
whooping blue with burnt hair & paint & glue A Mouth
of scissor blades blest with ash and bone dust -
Cats! Paper balls! arachnids, Everything!
To sleep, to sleep among heads & wool in every orifice I came here
to. but this guerilla nightmath rips up floor & kicks & grabs &
pincushions my kidneys un
still crawling over the body combustible



*



said the basic general sensation
is this is not
who visits the room the hair the poem
needle-theatre pitch or spittle
off the battery sting, that sizzle, bitter,
love or drip turning hair
we'll open the casing & be found, plucked out, used & cast to
to jelly, to irrelevance to drip, err arm length & where are you you
still



*



the basic general sensation is immediate & is morphine & every trace snaps
slow an accordion drag, single burning reel move
(What's Move to broken dogs in the next cubicle
howling on their tubes & tearing from machines
the fireworks Pretty & human as hair.
that long spewed glimmer where I'm tied down & asked my name
The date. This place. what about your head. Do you Can you How do you
mean to calculate the body shake, the nerve zap numbers
What do you mean you're sinking uncontrollably



*



now 416, pettiness, machinery.
we open the casing we discover forks, engine oil, pulmonary indications, crushed buttons. offal, ossicle, epidermal crumbs. &. the suspiciously organized presence of green lines in a row:
grass.
Grass.
its geometry interrupted only by the frights of landscape it projects: pointyhat barley huts, wind farms, electrical pylons. we suspect a haystack lingers & it's already inside with its simulated weltschmerz its urge for digestive well-being. I walk among with my bowel diary, screaming proper algebraic magick, oh, night math, go away. oh shapes, you speakers. this shit for posterity, as prophecy, for mapping omas in the furniture where coins & mice are burrowed, constipated by sea sponge & eager to be found, plucked out, used & used & used til the parts wear, the cavities dry. we will open the casing & husks will tumble out, empty things, awed. & we'll be hungry. & with all this slicing



*



to awake & see
the sudden heart & all its pinholes glowing its hairy spark, the waiting water takes muzg fuzzy with blood & Boring cell flakes, well. Our water hears all skins. It's thinking. Our water thrusts wire into paper, to kneecap. Our water features the stiff dance of barnacled students frotting with txt, what barricade what careful lack of planning what so unlike locked interior & how am I to answer



*



"It was like I was a fake person, like
I didn't really exist. I was just there",
she said of living for so long with a machine
pumping her blood I was quickly removed
& shoved down the throat of Matmos & oh the jelly,
irritating mouth-muck with no words but eroto-gobble
well I have no politic I never said I could do more than pervert
& there's the zero gravity:
come out & undress

untitled (32" x 22")

an oldie (2006)

all by me, featuring me making more of me. the ultimate vanity project.

3D goggle (79"x19")

adventures in salt dough

From the oily irradiated foam of the English Channel they arise, and wait.

sea creature

heads of s.l.o.s.

in anticipation of interruption (30"x17")

from BLACK GLOVE SERIES (46"x60")

available

The Crot Dreams of Xena

Jow Lindsay celebrates the birth of his latest book, The Seven Curses.

spontaneous combustion of katko

from untitled spinal series (49"x29")

(56"x15")

(47"x15")

from A Discourse on Vegetation & Motion

(forthcoming from Critical Documents)



today I battle Aphids with oily Hands


*


today I prepare to stab
the larval Thing inching


*


today I'm ready to succumb to a Flashbulb


*


today the Cat is Blood


*


today there is no Horizon there
is leching & Froth the whole
Window goes white in fear
I must undress for Money


*


today, Epiphany:
I am Ally Sheedy
ripping Scalp for Dandruff
to snow onto the Desk
(& the Void is white
& to be blind in not Darkness
& to disappear…)


*


today I swallow Hair & Bees
I knit Mistruths, I crocodile


*


today the fascist
Insect that preys
upon the People
chomps
my Face in Two

sb and vaneigem (48"x28")

untitled thing (58"x44")

new curtain (84"x48")

from BLACK GLOVE SERIES (56"x31")

activities for happy feet