PERVERSE 8D
Capener
Villon (Brick)
Beaney
Ttoouli
Turner
Hullo there,
I have a dreadful cold, so I’ll be brief. Please enjoy these wonderful poems! And get lots of vitamin C.
Chrissy
PERVERSE editor
PS As some poems have long lines, it may be best to view them on a larger-than-phone-sized screen, or a phone turned sideways, or projected onto twenty thousand sachets of Lemsip all stitched together.
Richard Capener
I Think I Will Call This Poem CARBONITE UTOPIA DRIFT Because CARBONITE UTOPIA DRIFT was My Mother’s Name
Excel pugilist chamomile
for the interstitial masses!!!
SENSIBLE STANZA!!!
Whenever I’m forced to be serious
implicit red softballs mark the West!!!
BANANAS!!!
I don’t want to belong to any club
that would have me for a member
and that is why I refuse to sleep
in my bed.
François Villon (translated by Terence Brick)
Quatrain
I am François, I’m a bit of an arse.
Born in Paris or rather Pontoise.
And when the solemn hangman calls
my neck will know the weight of my balls.
Je suis Françoys don’t il me poise
Né de Paris emprès Pontoise
Et de la corde d’une toise
Sçaura mon col que mon cul poise.
Jacob Louis Beaney
INSIDE & OUTSIDE THINGS
OUTSIDE THINGS
other people
buildings
spiders
INSIDE THINGS
my bed
pornography
spiders
George Ttoouli
Breath’s ember! My wee! Why, it burns a holy chime!
by Geof Greessier
Ewok twins handle barmy mead: hi-hi! Sth I
drank winds down my shut wet box, a lite poison. Teeth-w/out-
a-nom assail me from the inside, gak! War-twin fatwah, grit-led
for a grisled end. Damn furries! I patch a ewe on to a bull, bottle
an open-eyed retch. OK! Lithe or loose, set in
a stony mute. Tho the Ewok gits skip, chipper hake,
but haired over. Ohhh, the cheek! Shit-lenk kongs, which
hate me. O strong vin, her
heady rounds map sad patterns, there in my
muted tail.
Simon Turner
Where We’re Going (selections)
In the beginning was the yo of rain
In the beginning was the cathedral of speed
In the beginning was the mechanism of Donald
In the beginning was the symphony of dirigibles
In the beginning was the plish of clarification
In the beginning was the apricot of menace
//
A little reality whirls its vowels at dusk,
becoming something precise & spiky:
poetry survives but futuristic
& drenched in jaundiced symbolism.
//
Bulbous Unicorn: the Movie.
Metropolitan Alan: the Movie.
Trombone Nightmare: the Movie.
Burgundy Thunder: the Movie.
Clamped and Straining: the Movie.
Dishcloths of Gold: the Movie.
Autumn Bullshit: the Movie.
Halfway to Eruption: the Movie.
Dreck: the Movie.
Bisected Cassandra: the Movie.
‘Hammers’ the Penguin: the Movie.
Thirteen Structures: the Movie.
Bending Over and Following Through: the Movie
//
Anagrams of gamelan
& clusters of apostrophes
& ampersands undress
in guttural geographies
like ruffled scraps
of sandstone & rickety
cadenzas of jacaranda
in the backyard of the sun.
//
‘&’ is a universe in inky embryo.
//
for ‘puddles’ read ‘taxicabs’
for ‘taxicabs’ read ‘bluebirds’
for ‘bluebirds’ read ‘Lithuanians’
for ‘Lithuanians’ read ‘signified’
for ‘signified’ read ‘roof’
for ‘roof’ read ‘poetry’
for ‘poetry’ read ‘puddles’
//
“Factories lisp in pigeon parables
& Dionysus bursts with wild tissue.
You phone & pools of hazardous flowers
fountain from your antiseptic prongs
like some kinky industrial sparrows.”
Explain this poem to the Architect.
Contributor Bios & Notes
Richard Capener
https://www.instagram.com/richcapener/;
https://x.com/RichardCapener3
Richard Capener is the author of numerous chapbooks, most recently The Topiary (C22 Open Editions) and The Enochian Alphabet (Timglaset Editions). He edits Hem Press and its sound poetry imprint Angry Starlings. He also blogs through The Emergency Kisses and hosts Morgiana Podcast.
Note on ‘I Think I Will Call This Poem CARBONITE UTOPIA DRIFT Because CARBONITE UTOPIA DRIFT was My Mother’s Name’:
“I believe it is important for poetry to communicate the thoughts and feelings of the author to readers. This poem is very special for that reason. It is so personal that its meaning (not the meaning of the words but what it actually means) is hidden even from me. Because of this, I hope readers will find solace through feeling alienated. It is important for poetry to communicate the thoughts and feelings of the author to readers.”
Terence Brick
Terence Brick is a London-born Irish poet and translator whose work has appeared in PEN, Arts Council and Salmon Poetry anthologies & Orbis, Poetry Nottingham and The Interpreter’s House among prominent magazines.
Note on ‘Quatrain’:
“‘Quatrain’ was chosen to translate because it is a supreme example of gallows humour. Villon’s reprieve arrived a short time after its writing.”
Jacob Louis Beaney
https://www.jacoblouisbeaney.co.uk
Jacob Louis Beaney is an artist and writer from Great Yarmouth.
Note on ‘INSIDE & OUTSIDE THINGS’:
“The poem is part of an ongoing project where I am compiling all known phenomena into arbitrary lists.”
George Ttoouli
George Ttoouli is a writer, teacher, gardener and environmental campaigner based in London. His latest collection of poetry is from Animal Illicit, and his third collection, Parchment Scalpel Rock is forthcoming in May 2026, both from Broken Sleep.
Note on ‘Breath’s ember! My wee! Why, it burns a holy chime!’:
“Various life changes left me in need of new poetry connections, so I started an online homophonics workshop. ‘Breath’s ember!...’ emerged from that. It is an anagram of one of my favourite poems, the fourth in George Seferis’ Mythistorema. I felt like destroying something beautiful. Also, I wasn’t satisfied with translations by Keeley and Sherrard or Rex Warner, so cribbed my own. In doing so, I missed a typo, which carried through to the anagram. It felt more perverse.”
Simon Turner
https://theemmapress.com/shop/poetry/emma-press-picks/birmingham-jazz-incarnation/
Simon Turner’s most recent collection, Birmingham Jazz Incarnation, was published by the Emma Press in 2017. He currently lives and works in Warwickshire, and is the Primary Research Operative of MidCAT, the Midlands Centre for Anomalous Translation.
Note on ‘I Think’:
“‘Where We’re Going’ is a collaboration with Botnik, a programmable predictive keyboard (now seemingly mothballed, sadly), using my first collection, You Are Here, as the source text. The result was a hyperactive, candy-coloured cut-up or remix of my own work: recognisably ‘my’ ‘voice’, but distorted and mutated, like a guitar tone fed through an array of effects pedals. I is another, and all that malarkey. Long live the new flesh.”
See you for next week’s issue, with poems by Tim Tim Cheng, Claire Collison, Fiona Larkin, John Dorroh and Michelle Penn.
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