new from above/ground press: CASSETTE POEMS, by Vik Shirley

CASSETTE POEMS
factory practice-room cassette-recording responses
Vik Shirley
$5

factory 16: industrial estate

girl in factory 16
never liked that change
or that progression.
so-and-so’s an edgy
[one question]
[one white-noise standard]
oh but there was plenty
to be inhaled and automated
bobby gee as breakdown
bobby gee as high-pitched jangle
revenge ballad for the dead                                                    
for the try-to-escape
the whether-we-would
the now this is pretty
the now this is black-ruin persistence
sprinkled on top
or crumbled rather
kill bill slash kill dad etc
oh no the melodica
can’t get a signal
oh no the riff
still won’t speak to me
after all this
me?
i’m a straight split
and trebly like an escape-
pod fantasy
slash haunting

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Vik Shirley is a poet, writer, editor, educator and critic from Bristol, now living in Edinburgh, UK. Her books include Corpses (Sublunary Editions), Notes from the Underworld (Sublunary Editions), Disrupted Blue and other poems on Polaroid (Hesterglock), Strangers Wave (zimZalla), Poets (The Red Ceilings) and The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN). Her pamphlet, Some Deer, is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books and her second full-length collection, Nervous Tic, will be published by Sublunary Editions in Spring 2025. Her poems have appeared in such places as The Rialto, Magma, Tears in the Fence, Perverse and Dreaming Awake: New and Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, edited by Peter Johnson and Cassandra Atherton (MadHat Press) Her reviews have appeared in such places as Poetry London and PN Review and her regular column, ‘Commitment to Chush’, ran in Sublunary Editions’ Firmament magazine for three years. A regular performer at the European Poetry Festival, Vik is a Poetry School Tutor (teaching on the Surreal Narrative, Absurdism and the Grotesque in Poetry) and Director of Disrupted Blue Indie Press Publicity. She co-edits Surreal-Absurd at Mercurius and is Digital Editor at Sublunary Editions. She has a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal in Poetry from the University of Birmingham. Her chapbook, One by One, an Oulipian collaboration with the poet, Bob Brightt, is out now with Derek Beaulieu’s No Press.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com