A hatchet for Jung

Much excitement at allumination this week, as my last big post – the Olson / Lovecraft one – has been picked up on by the international poetry world. Greetings, new readers from just about everywhere! I hope you’re enjoying the unholy poetry / weirdness blend that goes on here. Some personal poetic excitement as well,Continue reading “A hatchet for Jung”

A mirror and a window both

In ‘S/Z’, his wonderful, word by word dissection of a Balzac short story, Barthes notes that ‘in the text, only the reader speaks.’ There’s a fascinating point about the process of reading to be drawn out of that. When we read a book, he’s saying, we read it in our voice, hearing the words inContinue reading “A mirror and a window both”

What’s a person anyway?

So much narrative removes the possibility of change. Although faced by risk, the hero always win out, the quality and correctness of his or her original vision unchallenged. They’re superficially about progress, but in fact such narratives privilege stasis. The hero might develop new skills (whether practical or emotional) to allow them to achieve theirContinue reading “What’s a person anyway?”

Processing the world

Well, last weekend was very rock’n’roll – Djinn’s fractured Arab rave beats blending with Indokrautprog mayhem from Grok on Saturday, and word / sound crossover on Sunday as M. John Harrison and Erik Davis read with Grok. Here’s the Sunday line up, waiting to groove: Grok came out of Stoke Newington’s leading boy band, theContinue reading “Processing the world”

A mirror to shine in

Seeing a ghost is like experiencing a fragment of someone else’s memory; an insistent, present, repeated moment broken out of all context. Fiction takes such fragments and sets them in a reasoned and coherent narrative and emotional context. For example, there’s Jack Torrance in Stephen King’s novel ‘The Shining’. He’s trapped in the Overlook Hotel,Continue reading “A mirror to shine in”

Seeing the world

At Arvon last week I was ranting – as you do – about John Burdett’s ‘Bangkok 8’, the only psychedelic transvestite Thai reincarnation police procedural you’ll ever need to read (apart, of course, from its sequel ‘Bangkok Tattoo’). And, if that whets your appetite for Thai mythology, there’s much else out there – S.P. Somtow’sContinue reading “Seeing the world”