New Reviews of 'Fleck and the Bank'

A few reviews have appeared on my pamphlet, Fleck and the Bank, to add to Harry Giles’s review at Ink, Sweat and Tears. Harry’s review was as close to a dream review as I’ve ever received, not just because it was mainly positive but because he seemed to 'get' more or less everything I was trying to do. For example:

‘The poems are a series of signs pointing not to Fleck but to other signs, because Fleck himself is not there, is someone of whom even an imagined newscaster’s imagined dress is “more solid than himself”.’

and:

‘... the themes themselves are unusual, or at least have unusual clarity: to write more about a specific absence than any real moment or presence seems new to me, especially when achieved with such grace. And there will, as I’ve suggested, be many more ways to read this book than mine, it is far bigger than its size suggests... Fleck couldn’t hope for a better offering, wherever he is.’

Three new reviews have gone up now at Sphinx and these reflect the huge variety of thought and opinion that constitutes Contemporary Poetry PLC these days. Jake Campbell doesn’t care much for the pamphlet, describing it as having ‘crystalline moments of greatness, but also elements of drudgery’. He goes on to say:

‘I want to be angered; I want to feel Fleck is angry, or at least alive. Instead, he feels like a wet lettuce.’ :-)

Rosie Miles, on the other hand, finds the poems and themes interesting. Rather self-effacingly, she says:

‘I am not this collection’s ideal reader. I don’t entirely “get” it. But I assent to the world it creates and Mackenzie’s use of language is inventive and full of a kind of demotic energy.’

Actually, her readings of the poems seem perfectly fair to me.

Matt Bryden finds it “satisfying” and “generously dense and experimental.” And he makes the interesting point that

‘While some of the fun in reading is to make out Fleck a little more clearly, in one sense he is the MacGuffin that keeps you reading to figure out his world.’

And, finally – on Andrew Shields’s blog – you'll find not a review as such, but more a reflection on how juxtaposition and disorientation are used in some of the poems to create new meanings.

Thanks to all the reviewers for taking the time to set down their thoughts, whether positive or negative. It’s all much appreciated and I certainly hope Salt and I sell a few pamphlets as a result...

Fleck, Magma 53 and Two Readings

The sun has sneaked out from the heavy cloud which has made June feel autumnal so far in Edinburgh, and already I feel positive about the day. I am definitely not suited for this country’s climate. Anyway, a few recent happenings...

First of all, my pamphlet, Fleck and the Bank has been out now for about a month and seems generally to be getting a good response from readers – thanks to all of you! It’s available from the Salt shop or from me. I have just installed a ‘Buy Now’ button (PayPal or card) below the image of the pamphlet’s cover near the top right of this blog, and also one for my The Opposite of Cabbage full collection. I hope someone will soon be the first to try it! Tell you what – for the first ever button order of the pamphlet, I will send a free copy of the collection. First come, first served...

Secondly, Magma 53, edited by Kona Macphee and I, has been published and is available from the Magma website. The launch at the Troubadour Cafe, London, on 4th June, was a fantastic occasion, and the first of two photo-enriched reports on it will be going up at the Magma blog very soon, hopefully later today. We are delighted with how the issue turned out – from the poems, reviews and articles to Hugh McEwen’s excellent cover and M J F Chance's illustrations.

Thirdly, and finally, I am doing two readings in the next week. I’m reading tonight, Wednesday 13th June from 8pm at ‘Verse Hearse’, Rio Cafe, Hyndland St, Glasgow (near Kelvin Hall underground station), along with the uniquely creative nic-e-melville (expect plenty of high-quality cut ‘n’ paste and Tippex), followed by an open mic. Then, I’m reading next week, Tuesday 19th June, at the Fruitmarket Gallery, 45 Market Street, Edinburgh (at the back entrance of Waverley Station) from 7pm, along with Chris Emery and Andrew Philip (£4). [Unfortunately, we've had to cancel this reading. Apologies for this. We hope to reschedule it for a later date] This will be the Scottish launch of Chris's new book, The Departure, which is well worth getting hold of.

The Fleck Pizza

Look, here comes a flying saucer, FLECK
on top in chopped tricolour peppers!

He has arranged them this way:
the pizza a self-addressed valentine,
rehearsal for the real thing.

- from 'The Bank, part 2' in Fleck and the Bank

This pizza tasted pretty good!

A Reading, Two Magazines, and Literature Night

This Sunday, 13th May at 7.30pm, in Henderson's @ St John’s Cafe – that’s the Henderson’s beneath St John’s Church on the corner of Lothian Road and Princes St, Edinburgh – I’ll be reading along with AB Jackson, Roddy Lumsden and Kona Macphee. Entry is free. We will have books/pamphlets on sale, but you have my word that no one will be refused exit if they haven’t bought anything. Thanks are due to the Shore Poets who have allowed us to use their PA system - much appreciated. We could do with an audience though, so please come along! It's a fantastic, atmospheric venue with clear acoustics and terrific local beer and lager bottled behind the bar.

On the subject of publications, I had a poem (‘To Occupy an Absence’) from Fleck and the Bank published the other day on the Ink, Sweat and Tears web magazine. And I have three 'Nocturnes' published in Shearsman magazine’s latest double-issue – 91 & 92.

Finally, I’m quite interested in the Noc Literatury/Literature Night happening next Wednesday 16th from 7pm at the Scottish Poetry Library. Describing itself as an attempt “to offer a platform to European countries to present contemporary writing and new European literary voices in a creative way,” it sounds like the right thing focus on in Scotland at the current time. The best Scottish literature has looked outwards, internationally, while contributing to a distinctive, national (but never ‘nationalist’ in a narrow sense) body of work, and mainland Europe has been, and continues to be, a major source of inspiration for Scottish writers.

Magma, Fleck and More Shadow than Bird

I had been thinking of creating a new blog, a new start and all that, given that this one has been semi-abandoned in recent months, but that would make no sense. Instead, I’m going to re-launch Surroundings today and try to be more organised.

I have had a fair bit on in recent months, which has made it almost impossible to blog. Until the end of April, I was tied-up with the co-editing (with Kona Macphee) of Magma 53, which is now hurtling towards production and will indeed be published on 28th May with a launch on 4th June at the Troubadour in London. I can’t give anything away yet, but I do feel really pleased with the issue.

I was also revising poems for a new pamphlet, Fleck and the Bank, which has just been published. I still haven’t seen a physical copy but a package should arrive today. I know what’s going to happen. I have various things on today, to do with work, which will take me out the house for a fair bit of the day. The package will arrive when I’m out and I’ll have to collect it from the sorting office in the Gyle Industrial Estate, an area full of factories and warehouses. I’ll wander about for ages in search of the sorting office amid dozens of near-identical buildings and, by the time I find it, it will have closed down for the day. Anyway, it's just over five pounds from the Salt website, where you can also download a free pdf sampler.

Finally, just a quick mention of a book I’m reading at the moment. I spent April reading Rilke, WS Merwin and Durs Grunbein and thought nothing would top that combination this year. However, Nuar Alsadir’s first collection, More Shadow than Bird, is outstanding. I will try to say more in a future post, but for now I’ll just say the title is well chosen. The poems deal not so much with flickers of light illuminating the strange or obscured, as with shadows flitting briefly and quickly across a scene – often the shadows of the apparently unknowable self (if the ‘self’ is an iceberg, this collection focuses on the vast section below the surface). That’s not a prescription for vague writing – every word seems precise and vital – but for a persuasive and musical evocation of what usually remains unthought or entirely out-of-sight.

'Fleck and the Bank' Cover

The cover of my forthcoming chapbook, which will be published as part of the Salt Modern Voices series. It features a guy called Fleck, a bank, and poems which riff around themes of collapse, disintegration and disappearance via friends, virtual friends and obscure notes. Orignal lines square up to stolen ones, money makes a cameo appearance as a ghost, politicians leap into cauldrons of boiling fat, theology is done by mobile phone, and the Patron Saint of Plainsong Maledictions turns up with a little advice in song, which readers are welcome to singalong to if they wish. I also have a full collection coming out in 2013, although none of the poems in the chapbook will also feature in the collection.

There's not yet a definite publication date, but I'll let you know when that becomes clear. A good number of the other chapbooks in the series can be found here. So far, I've read Neil Addison's Apocapulco (for some reason, this doesn't seem to have its own page on the site) and Mark Burnhope's The Snowboy, both of which were really good.