TEN EMAILS FROM STRANGERS

‘What a big synthesizer
you’ve got.’ ‘All the better
to make strange music with.’

The aunts are in distress;
we phone to comfort them,
are never sure if it helps.

It is idyllic through the window:
the river is fuller than ever,
water and light overflow,

leaves on the trees sparkle,
autumn wind sings and shouts.
We manage life at a distance,

eat bananas to keep us going.
The cleaner says there is talk
on Facebook of snow to come.

 

SPECIES DESIGN

Using an assembly of typography and symbols
to create a species isn’t the easiest thing to do,
and I know: I am back from the brink.

Using hexacoordinate carbon structures,
brands thrive in a cultural landscape
if set out in a logical sequence.

Our mission is to use fresh and playful design
to engage the automated platform
while conservationists struggle to protect

existing natural species and market
a line of built-in and free-standing furniture.
Whenever possible, negative ecological impacts

should soften the edges where cities meet
animal habitats and create a symbiotic relationship
between different ideas and considerations.

Poets are renowned for their hardiness
and diurnal activity, the Little Owl Athene
is a sedentary species prone to using text

and animal references. What goes in
are wild plants found growing naturally,
small molecules and natural selection,

what comes out is a species of candlelight
companions, handcrafted and designed
to provide comfort and therapy for us all.

There are as many pixels as there are
bony fish, sharks, eels, and turtles, with
minimal function and a notion of normal.

 

PURITY OF FORM

The capacity of the market to absorb its enemies
should never be underestimated; it is no longer
clear where the point of balance lies.

The heroic self prefers alertness and action
to mediation as the dream dissolves; members
document their intention to bridge the gap

between one verse and the next. We see it
from the point-of-view of cultural presence,
a discursive formation of community arts

and research into sleep. The text is constructed
in binary opposition to less-received poets
along with small-scale, marginal cinema

and collaboration. From the outset
it was clear that we are all implicated
by a traditional and authoritative voice.

Most readers ignore the obvious route
preferring to delay the move from
external world to semantic device.

Audience figures decline, we fail to fulfil
the proper work ethic; only a comma
separates us from heartfelt radical praxis.

 

MONOPHONIC

art surveillance anthologies
of guitar and noise

synthesizer throb
and screeching voice

parallel worlds
where time flows backwards

floating windows
looking into where I used to be

a primer about
how to exclude everyone

 

PATTERNS IN THE FIELDS

what is given:
conjecture & assumption

focus on regret
the grinding noise of remorse

generic response
(mostly guilt-free)

last incarnation
(seeing the sites)

lust & leech
(she loved you)

all done like a fool
according to the rules

my ruined nature
using up what was given

 

Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Wriitng and Journalism at Falmouth University, the editor of Stride, and a contributing editor to International Times. He has many books of poetry in print, including Dear Mary, The Return of the Man Who Has Everything, Wildlife and Ballads of the Alone, all published by Shearsman. Shearsman also published Encouraging Signs, a book of essays, articles and interviews. He has also authored many collaborative works; and edited Smartarse and co-edited Yesterday’s Music Today for Knives Forks & Spoons Press, From Hepworth’s Garden Out: poems about painters and St. Ives for Shearsman, and Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: manifestos and unmanifestos for Salt. His critical writing has appeared in Punk & Post-Punk (which he is on the editorial board of), Journal of Writing and Creative Practice, New Writing, English, Text, Axon, Musicology Research, Revenant, The Quint: an interdisciplinary journal from the north and Journal of Visual Art Practice. He also co-authored chapters in Brian Eno. Oblique Music (Bloomsbury, 2016) and Critical Essays on Twin Peaks: The Return (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).