I love Tom Jenks’ poetry, it’s so playful and often hilariously funny yet there’s more going on beneath the surface than you might at first imagine.
Go read more at the Litter website. Go on! – Here – http://leafepress.com/litter11/spence6/spence6.html
Here’s an indication that the avant-garde, for want of a more reliable term, can have a sense of humour as well as being exploratory and innovative. Nathan Walker’s new book is a splendid tome, 600 poems, a poem per page, each centred in upper case type.
You can read more HERE
And in case you haven’t purchased, do so HERE
Chrissy Williams if p then q collection Epigraphs gets a good mention in Steve Spence’s reviews round up in the latest batch of Stride reviews.
Clearly an interest in popular culture and the advent of the internet is combined here with a more ‘high-art’ tendency though the barriers appear to have totally broken down. Leaving aside the aforementioned ‘thematically-based texts’ there are some interesting juxtapositions at play, and juxtaposition – as well as choice – is clearly an important tool when working with existing materials.
This is poetry which is both ‘serious’ and ‘funny’ and Jenks is even more aware than I am of the possibilities which can emerge from the ‘careful’ use of quotation marks – [213] ‘it is hard to ‘argue’ that ‘this’ is ‘poetry” . Jenks is a cracking writer and great fun as well.
