PERVERSE 5C
Etter
Fox
Hammond
Larkin
Lamboll
Hullo there,
If we were clowns, playfulness would be at the heart of our practice. But clowns play for laughs (mostly), while poets do not (mostly). Playfulness is often at the heart of our practice though, but to a different end. What do we play for, if not for laughs? Is it to find meaning in unusual places? Or to show that we don’t always need meaning? Just to show off the game iself and our enjoyment of playing it?
In the notes that accompany the following poems, the words ‘play’ and ‘silly’ are both mentioned. I think all these poems illustrate various ideas of how to ‘play’ in poetry. Poets sometimes applaud ‘playfulness’ and denigrate ‘silliness’, but I’d argue that silliness is often the spark for playfulness, and deserves just as much celebration.
Play isn’t about creating rules to constrict us; it shows us what kind of games are possible. Games lead on to cames. And when they’re good enough, we all want to play.
I hope you have a playful week. Please enjoy these poems.
With warmest wishes,
Chrissy
PERVERSE Editor
(FYI if you are reading this on a mobile phone, it may be best to turn the phone sideways. Some of the poems are displayed as images, so make sure you’ve clicked “show images” at the top of this mail. If you'd rather read these poems in a PDF you can do so here, along with an archive of previous issues.)
Carrie Etter
Make Shine, Makeshift
I put the diamonds in the sun to make sparkle.
If I’m struck by lightning, I might go that bright.
I might disintegrate and sans guilt join the missing.
Admit you’ve contemplated such freedom.
Admit as little as possible. I’m always admitting—
could that be my tragic flaw?
Could I be tragic? I murder only mosquitos,
so easy to wash the blood from my hands.
Hands up if you’re a fellow changeling,
surprising your self with new selves.
It’s the new that haunts you. It’s the new you’re good for.
Oliver Fox
Mickey Mouse enters the public domain (2024)
Correctly experiencing this poem requires an array of fourteen CRT monitors. The author recommends the Sony PVM-9L2, Ikegami TM10-17RP, or the Hitachi CPM2504C. Display each image on a separate monitor, in any order. Observe the poem while flanked by a senior colleague.
1. Telephone poles pulled out like carrots.
2. A mouth dripping with enzymes that will devour us, pixel by pixel.
3. Iron restraints, mangled and broken.
4. My job crystal glows in my palm. I am close to the next level.
5. It’s just so huge. So unimaginably huge.
6. YouTubers mudlarking for pieces of a washed up Lego Star Wars Millenium Falcon.
7. Sunlight pushes through a fresh wound in the facility’s concrete wall.
8. Drain your voice, like spinal fluid, into this small metal canister.
9. USB-C compliant devices shake themselves awake before continuing their migratory journey.
10. Space is vast and objects have value.
11. A footprint damp with glycol from the obliterated vape shop.
12. Floating point operations cease unanimously: CGI rendering farms spontaneously combust.
13. At an undisclosed location, someone gasps at an array of monitors. They are flanked by a senior colleague.
14. The immense black yawn of a cartoon eye stops to look into the penthouse suite. The next in line to be CEO touches a hand to the window.
Emma Hammond
your face is
Fiona Larkin
World is grass®️
AberAvon is filling our bellies
we broaden on AberBonus
Caledon gone we chew AberClyde
forget Dundrum
summer’s Elyria
failed Fintona
AberGain muscles out Glenstal
overtakes Hurricane
picks off Irondal —
Javorio lost — Kilrea counted out
AberLee scattered far
AberMagic supreme
no more Nashota
no more Oakpark
AberPlentiful queens it
small-bladed Romark
outshone by AberStar
old tang of Triwarwic —
unvarying diet
viscera crammed with AberWolf
even our precious Xenon
and Youpi
vanish in the face of AberZeus
Robin Lamboll
Exclamations upon meeting three lemurs
Contributor Notes
Carrie Etter
Carrie Etter’s most recent publication is The Shooting Gallery, a pamphlet of two prose poem series exploring the conjunction of youth and violence (Verve, 2020).
Note on ‘Make Shine, Makeshift’:
“I wrote this poem years ago and was exploring, as I do again and again, the way sound and sense riff off one another generatively. Writing it was a work of play.”
Oliver Fox
Oliver Fox is a poet, musician and sound artist from London. He worked for The Poetry Society from 2016 up until late 2020, and is sorry he never replied to your email.
Note on ‘Mickey Mouse enters the public domain (2024)’:
“Disney’s copyright on its 1928 cartoon Steamboat Willie is set to expire in 2024, meaning the character of Mickey Mouse should finally become public domain. An all-powerful mascot busting loose feels like some epochal corporate cataclysm big enough to unravel the world itself – a bit like what happens in giant robot reality-melting 90’s anime Neon Genesis Evangelion, which ended up being one of this poem’s bigger points of reference.”
Emma Hammond
https://outsidercoaching.co.uk/
Emma has a new collection called Valour which is out in April with Broken Sleep Books.
Note on ‘your face is’:
“I wrote this poem ages ago when I was playing with visual poetry. It’s a love poem in a way, but also just silly.”
Fiona Larkin
https://fionalarkinpoetry.wordpress.com
Fiona Larkin’s debut pamphlet A Dovetail of Breath was published by Rack Press in 2020, and Broken Sleep Books will release Vital Capacity in 2022. Her work was highly commended by the Forward Prizes 2019. She organises poetry events with Corrupted Poetry.
Note on ‘World is grass®’:
“I wrote ‘World is Grass®️’ after wondering what exactly ‘grass-fed’ meant. Nice to imagine ruminant creatures browsing the meadows, chewing saxifrage, trefoil, speedwell – but a bit of searching provided an entirely different language of grass. I found all the names in the poem in commercial grass seed catalogues, where one particular brand, Aber®️High Sugar Grasses, seems as dominant as humanity. When I came across the perennial ryegrass named AberZeus, the poem was almost there.”
Robin Lamboll
https://scienceisshiny.wordpress.com/
Robin Lamboll researches climate change and human emissions, and writes on the intersection between the natural and the human. Robin has won Cambridge, UK and Madrid International poetry slam finals, and came second in the World Cup of Slam 2019.
Note on ‘Exclamations upon meeting three lemurs’:
“I read about Chinese ‘one-syllable’ restricted poems and wondered why no one wrote that sort of poem in English. I believe I have answered that question.”