News From The Front Lines

Here is a link to the new newsletter from Epic Rites Press, News from the Front Lines. One by me in there along with work by some other great writers. Links and special book offers too.

artwork for "nobody wants to go to heaven...."

As said earlier Michael Mc Aloran is editing "nobody wants to go to heaven, but everybody wants to die" 125 forthcoming poems by me from Oneiros books. This is the awesome cover that Dave Mitchell just deisgned from Mick's artwork.

And here is the back cover blurb from Mick

‘The eviscerating negation of a pristine surgeon, this book culminates in a collection of what represents McLean’s finest work to date. These are no bullshit poems, etched with a masterful control of both succinct language and piercing imagery, born of a restless intellect, at once at war with the within and the without. This book has the capacity to make you feel empowered in the face of the Nothing that is, and you will thank him for it…’

new book at last

I have not been thinking too much about books since laughing at funerals from epic rites press. But Michael Mc Aloran is the new poetry editor at Oneiros Books, who share Paraphilia Magazine's website, and he suggested a sort of selected poems with much new work entitled "nobody wants to go to heaven but everybody wants to die" - this is underproduction at present through the good offices of Mick and of Dave Mitchell, who runs Oneiros books. Here is there Facebook page.

It will be round 130/40 pages long and is due in June. Roughly then they have a great collection coming form the talented Craig Podmore, and they have awesome titles out already so i am hugely pleased about this. Michale Mc Aloran is letting me use one of his paintings as cover art and has checked through my selection of poems, that I think constitutes the definitive collection from me, thus far.

There's also a chapbook due from Grey Book Press and a first novel from Unlikely Books in 2014. Busy fucker, aren't I?

Clockwise Cat

And here it comes, the new Clockwise Cat (Its 25th life). There are two poems by me in it. There's a review of a book by Barton D Smock, and one of a chapbook by Kevin Reid. And a review of Travis Blair and one of a book by of my present editor Mick Mc Aloran, In Damage Seasons.

Who's been a busy little fucker, then?

The Shwibly

Delighted to have three forthcoming in The Shwibly, which is a great zine with a lot of other great writers in the debut issue, as you can see here.

The art of being human

Although I am not particularly proficient at said art, a great thanks to Daniela Voicu for taking three poems and an ugly photo for inclusion in the anthology this group is doing, It's due in May or June this summer, here is their Facebook page.

I feel that the conventional understanding of the art of being human was perfectly stated by Larkin in "This be the verse". The link goes to the Poetry Foundation.

exquisite corpses

Here is the promised exquisite corpse at Sein und Werden. Part two is me. There are other sexy stiffs there too.

Zombie Logic

Hugely pleased to have five up in Zombie Logic Review, the online presence of the laudable Zombie Logic Press. Here they are.

Gillian Prew - Throats full of graves

Gillian Prew
Throats Full of Graves
Lapwing Publications
chapbook review by David McLean

This is a brief review of the latest production by the Scottish poet Gillian Prew, in my opinion the best female poet currently active.

Her liminal love with its dug arms
scoops the red roots of the tight trees
where her best wedding was throttled and laid,
and her lit loss burns in her brain
scorching the slow madhouse of her days.

It might be appropriate that I modestly neglect to refer to a poem in this book that is about me, namely “In the garden with a poet”. I shall, however, refrain from doing the modest thing and mention it.

Days are here – untidy. That is the beauty
of light: it illuminates the mess
for embracing. We are

a long time nothing. There is no place
to exhibit the night like a sword.

This because it exhibits clearly, in these closing lines - which are much better than anything I have done recently - the terrible predicament of those like Ms Prew and myself, who are atheists and might like to be logically precise, when we affect to produce the “poetic”,  When “we are a long time nothing” the word “we” no longer applies to us, time and our world has ceased and probably only Larkin has ever succeeded in saying this properly, in “Aubade”. Of course, I object dreadfully to the term “poet” as a sortal, it identifies no clear class of objects; it is usually little more than a dreadful piece of self-promotion. Were I ever, per impossibile, to make a living by poems, I might allow the description on Derridean grounds - “It's me job, like” - but not as a token of self-ascribed excellence.

More seriously, in another poem, Prew writes

I, like a slow thaw in the garden where
all this started under the sun yesterday
(or years ago) There is

a simmering vitality that permits persistence,
that allows healing and the adoration of wounds

This is close to the essential, the reflexive wallowing in despite and self-contempt that is the essence of anything interesting in literature. The glorious puny assholes who fall down in their sheer stupid debility waiting for some cunt Godot who never even shows, they are so much more beautiful than any alleged poetic perfection:

There is no destiny worth hoping for.

There will be death, and
in the meantime life. What rages
inside is something
if we are lucky
else,
do not fear
or love,
or bother to breathe.

The metaphor of interiority is acceptable here, of course, although I assume the inside to be the consciousness that spreads outside the alleged real. The poems here are of seasonal mortality, or, more precisely, of facticity and thrownness, of being there in this confusing admixture of earth and world that colors memories ideologically and insists - with the simmering vitality that is the sheer denial of entropy that even the simplest organism is - on taking a shot at perdurance, an attempt that is doomed to failure since the ultimate victory of entropy will become the ordered beauty of perfected and, necessarily, unobserved disorder. If we could perdure, this would be spoiled. But there is a pointless meaningless beauty in the striving, one which expresses itself in the laudable futility of poetry, at which Prew kicks serious ass, with poems like this one, of “Memory”:

Bud of the quiet dead, lifting
light from the black-bitten wound. A grief,
a lie a dry, futile church. You are a ruin
of tears and ragged distances. A hidden.
A scarred truth roaming bone. You fail
with a brave despair
like widowed songbirds, their throats full of graves.

The need for miracles, as Prew says, is abject. What actually is, is enough. if one does not multiply entities beyond necessity one can still populate a poem.

I think this may be Prew's best yet, which means that you should buy the thing. It's not out yet, but here are details:
http://gillianprew.com/forthcoming-from-lapwingpublications/

funerals @ Tree Killer Ink, nothing to do with obnoxious dead politicians and their £8 000 000 funerals

With a link to a review by the late great Todd Moore, who was worth eight million times more than Thatcher, and a link to a revised press release. Get it here.

This is one of the books that I do not find retrospectively embarrassing - great work by Wolfgang Carstens the editor and everybody else involved.

hellbound at Tree Killer Ink

Pinhead will kill anything. So he won't give a flying fuck that hellbound is on sale from Tree Killer Ink. Here it is, though, pace Pinhead. Lots of other great books from Epic Rites Press there too.

Waiting with great excitement for the release of Lords Of Salem. Rob Zombie's new album Venomous Rat Regeneration Vendor is hugely good. 

Huge cred to the defunct Chumbawamba for swift release of an EP about the even more defunct bitch goddess Thatcher. Disgusting to hear and see fools praising the slime - particularly the strange statements by Obama.

There's a ghastly corpse who clings to the side of this building. He is animated by some sick and deranged parody of life. Sometimes I see his foul eyes staring in at me, burning with the evil insanity of the pit. "You alright, mate?" he asks. "Yeah, I'm alright" I say. The dead have become much more sociable since Romero's earliest work.

Gutter Eloquence

There's a great issue of Gutter Eloquence up, and there's work by me in it here. It's an absolutely awesome zine as always, a quarterly nowadays, and it's full of underground ratty goodness.

laughing at funerals & slaughtering fucking trees

Wolfgang over at Epic Rites in sunny Canada, Sweden's rivals in hockey and poetry, has had the bright idea of running Tree Killer Ink to distribute product. So now you can get laughing at funerals at this link for a wretched $13.50  - do so or the bunny gets it. (The trees are already fucked.)

 

Mung Being 49

There's a new issue of the great Mung Being out, it's an enjoyable read as usual, and poems by me are posted here. 


All my work in the zine and updated bio here.

A New Ulster

There's a new issue of A New Ulster out, an awesome zine as always, and five by me in it. It's here at issuu.

Pyrokinection

Happy to say that the 3rd of June will see three by me posted in Pyrokinection, which you can check out now if you like, it's an excellent site.

pornSad

Pleased to say that later today five poems by me are coming in pornSad, a new zine run by the great Barton D Smock. Updating later.

In Damage Seasons - Michael Mc Aloran

Read review here
Buy here http://www.paraphiliamagazine.com/indamageseasons.html

Cuib-Nest-Nido

Pleased to say that there is work by me in the new Cuib-Nest-Nido, it's coming at this link today. Thanks to Daniela Voicu. 

There are five poems by me on page 14, and a picture of awesome ugliness.  It's a great with and a lot of work in English in it.

Mung Being

The theme of the next Mung Being is books, whatever those are, and I took a chance and submitted. 

Three by me will be appearing in the next issue, issue 49. Here is a link to other work by me that has previously been featured in the zine along with a picture of myself and Oscar, the amazing faltulent dog, in my updated bio.

 

poetic diversity

Pleased to say that the new Poetic Diversity is out. The contents are linked here and there's a poem by me in it here.

1/25

There are too few new print zines starting, so it is gratifying both that there is a new one coming, and that i was invited to be in the preview issue. It's called 1/25, and it is under the editorship of Craig Sernotti. 

The website is here and open submissions will soon be underway.

Sein und Werden, delectable corpses

Today is a happy day, for the exquisite corpse issue of Sein und Werden is up. The impressive list of contents is linked here. And the poem by me is linked here.

There is a forthcoming actual exquisite corpse, but this delectable cadaver is slow in decaying, evidently, and will be posted at a later date. I participated in its death, I confess.

 

 

Dead Flowers & Bodhidharma

Pleased to say that Bohemian Pupil Press have a zine called dead flowers, even more pleasing is that a poem by me called Bodhidharma is in the new issue, and it's available free as a .pdf at the link.

Kevin Reid - Body Voices

Read review here

Buy here http://press.crisischronicles.com/2013/02/09/bodyvoiceskevinreid.aspx

A New Ulster 7

Very happy to have work forthcoming, five poems I believe, in issue numero seven of A New Ulster. This is a spelndid new zine in the tradition of older Irish lit mags like Honest Ulsterman that are no longer in print. Huge thanks to editor Amos Gideon Grieg for having me again, though I am but of the humble Welsh variety of Celt.

Icebox

As I said I would a while back I have three poems at Icebox, a new philosophically themed online poetry zine, many references there to many things. Some other great work there too so check it out, despite the misspelling of my name.

Ambriel revolution again

As noted below there is another feature about me up in Ambriel Revolution. This time with the poems without breathing, dead shadow, there is stone, and ample begonia, as well as the sound of memory, which is also linked below. Several of these were inspired by Nico, by the way.

The Rampallian

In a few weeks spring is coming, but now the winter issue of The Rampallian is out. It's the "mean wretch of literary magazines" and they have a poem by me that can be purchased in the fragile and flammable form of paper at this link.

Vayavya

As promised a while ago, there are two poems by me in Vayavya's spring issue, my things being here.

Ambriel Revolution

There was a feature by me a while ago at Ambriel Revolution, and I'm delighted to say that there is now another. Here is the first poem, the sound of memory.

 

dead flowers

Pleased to say that Bohemian Pupil Press, the link being to their Facebook, have a zine called Dead Flowers, named after the Rolling Stones song so awesomely covered by G.G. Allin, the guest editor of which has been kind enough to accept a poem by me called Bodhidharma for their next issue.

All is well here, all manner of things are well.


 

of Sein und Werden and exquisite corpses

Pleased to say that a poem by me will be in the exquisite corpse issue of Sein Und Werden. There are plenty of things by me in their online archives and in the old print zines by the way, dig them out, they are all succulent cadavers too. Sein's editor Rachel Kendall is in fact doing an exquisite corpse as I write these words with a few sentences from each of the various contributors to the zine. 

My poem however is about actual delectable decedents.

splinterswerve #9

I am delighted to have a piece, together with ugly photo, in the newest issue of splinterswerve, all the way from Canada. Here it is.

Tree Killer Ink

There is a tribute issue of Tree Killer Ink coming out and two poems by me about Baudelaire are in there. One of them reacting to the fact that people assumed that I was reacting to some shooting in a school in a couple of poems. I never react to current events like that. If I were to write today about pedophile priests I might not even mean the vampire army of Roman Catholics and their unreliable pope, I might mean the other pedophile priests, the illiterate psychopaths who also follow a pedophile icon "prophet" - the Mohammedans.

They are all evil.

Mung Being 48

It's time for a new issue, issue 48, of the great Mung Being. It's the zine that grows in awesomeness every issue and there are three poems by me here, and at the link there's lots of old work. One of them is even a sort of love poem. One is inspired by Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Lupita.

Mark Givens does a splendid job with Mung Being - along with Clockwise Cat and Gutter Eloquence it grows, as noted, in awesomeness with every issue. This is unusual.

A New Ulster issue 5

It is with much happy that I announce the release of issue 5 of A New Ulster, available at the link, wherein is me. Five poems what I have written, at least, if not actually the gorgeous physical embodiment I am to my doggie.

As always, it is good to read.

I may be tired and emotional, but at least I'm not drunk.

Cuib Nest Nido

Very pleased that Daniela Voicu has been kind enough to publish another five by me in Cuib Nest Nido which is available at the link. It's always gratifying to get things published in countries that are not the usual ones for English language writing. The zine is a free download btw.

Tearing my hair out trying to post this since my Tre mobile broadband works very crappily in Blentarp in Skåne, whither we have moved, though the house is actually a little closer to Veberöd. Some changes need to be made here. The move went reasonably well, only one item of furniture actually dying.

Gutter Eloquence 26

Thanks to the great Jack T Marlowe two poems by me will be appearing in his awesome zine Gutter Eloquence when it comes out, a quarterly nowadays, in April. I have many poems there already in various issues, they can be found among the links in the panel to the right.

And now for something completely different. You know what I love? People who complain about grammar among the young people who use the Internet's many blog sites and social media nowadays. I love it when the complaints of these people are a skein of solecisms, inappropriately used "long words", and arrogant vulgarity. There is a site that affects to defend the correct use of English, a site which strokes the egos of these half-educated untalented redbrick prigs - the entertaining thing is that I have once or twice noted that this site itself uses bad English. Way to go, peasants.

To return to the topic of this entry, the great Gutter Eloquence defends the awesomeness of the English language, check it out

The Rampallian

More pleasant news today, namely that one by me is coming in February's The Rampallian, the "mean wretch" of literary magazines.