PERVERSE 7G
Ormonde
Skinner
Buchan
Glynne
Black
Hullo there,
We’ve only a few weeks left of this issue, and then we’re out. The traditional end-of-year acceleration feels even more acute when putting out poems on a weekly basis I think, but it’s also quite comforting. I can track the days and weeks and see that things have actually been done. Hooray!
I’ll announce the full lineup of the PERVERSE readers in a separate message this week, but I’m very much looking forward to our event on Monday 11th December! There will be ten poets, and each will just read their poem from the issue, as well as giving us a bit of insight into the process of writing it. Please do come if you can. I think it’ll be fun. Info below.
In the meantime, please enjoy these poems.
Chrissy
PERVERSE editor
PS It may be best to view these poems on a larger-than-phone-sized screen, or else a phone turned sideways.
Ryan Ormonde
Sugababes Paradox
Overload
Sugababes is a vocal trio originally (and presently) composed of Mutya Buena, Keisha Buchanan and Siobhán Donaghy. The trio underwent three changes in its line-up (Donaghy having been replaced by Heidi Range, Buena by Amelle Berrabah and Buchanan by Jade Ewen) before the three founding members formed a new trio, now known as Sugababes. The Sugababes paradox can be thought of as an example of a puzzle of material constitution; that is, a problem with determining the relationship between a vocal trio and its members.
Fair is foul and foul is fair.
Round Round
According to Donaghy, the solution is to accept the conclusion that the assembly of members that make up Sugababes is not the same entity as Sugababes, but that the two entities simply occupy the same space at the same time.
L’enfer c’est les autres.
About You Now
Another common theory, put forth by Buena, is to divide up all entities into three dimensional time-slices which are temporally distinct; which avoids the issue that the two different line-ups exist in the same space at one time and a different space at another time by considering the line-ups to be distinct from each other at all points in time.
Omne trium perfectum.
Get Sexy
According to Buchanan, the thought puzzle arises because of extreme externalism: the assumption that what is true in our minds is true in the world. Buchanan says that this is not an unassailable assumption, from the perspective of the natural sciences, because human intuition is often mistaken. Cognitive science would treat this thought puzzle as the subject of an investigation of the human mind. Studying this human confusion can reveal much about the brain’s operation, but little about the nature of the human-independent external world.
Mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru.
Today
Following on from this observation, a significant strand in cognitive science would consider Sugababes not as an entity, nor even a collection of objectively existing members, but rather as an organisational structure that has perceptual continuity. When a Sugababes fan thinks of Sugababes, they have expectations about who is found where, how they interact, and how they interact with the wider world. As long as there is a time/space continuity between this set of relationships, it is Sugababes.
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
Richard Skinner
Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie, Starfish & Coffee
after Joanna Newsom & Prince
There are some mornings when the sky looks like a road
Butterscotch clouds
a tangerine
O, morning without warning like a hole
Will you just look at me?
If you set your mind free, baby, maybe U’d understand
I almost died
Just give it up
And some machines are dropped from great heights lovingly
Sometimes I wondered
Oh don’t, don’t you lift me up
I am cold, out waiting for the day to come
And I am watching you
And I cannot let go
All of us were ordinary
And you are starry, starry, starry
Kit Buchan
Sinatra Sings Sinatra
On behalf of myself and the on-train team
and in the presence of this congregation
I’d like to thank the honourable gentleman
for services to interfaith relations.
Suspect is reported to be in possession of
a brave and urgent new voice;
the premium version has many unlockable skins
with scenes some viewers may find distressing.
If you pop yourself up on the table for me please
we’ll just brown that off in a hot non-stick pan.
I understand you were recently in an accident that wasn’t your fault:
this is normal procedure for flying in the hours of darkness.
While every effort has been made to ensure accuracy,
unattended items will be removed and may be destroyed
if you do not mention when questioned something you later rely on in court,
in keeping with the original Georgian framework.
The best way to predict the future is to create it
with a minimum of public inconvenience;
now let us say together the words our saviour taught us:
I’m going to have to ask you to step out of the vehicle.
Alex Glynne
iii (from the sequence ‘@pstorals’)
Over his Ibanez AZES40’s frets
inlaid with swallows
Ichika Nito’s fingers rest
…then fall
and thus his song begins
When mom brings home Mcdonalds…
I didn’t know flowers could look like this
Paradisaeidae
send out their calls
and down
bespoke custom terrazzo
run off the doomers’
sorrows
When Mom drives past Mcdonalds
and says: ‘there’s food at home’…
The website is the brand
beneath the peepal tree
the dragon rests in agony
… and yet
what the waterfall arrests
a kind of cashmere
albedo effect
I like to call my feelings
cannot be reached
i miss you…
i miss you…
But have we unsubscribed yet
Ichika?
does the plant mom’s
Pintrest
betray our longing
for a merely infantile nostalgia
or does a deeper torrent
stream from the blockchains’ encrypted sluices?
An ice shelf about the size of Rome
or a fashion house the size of the Amazon
can you tell me?
...
...
No matter
So many involutions
traced on
the surface of the koi pond
your reticence
your song however
is Gucci
and as I refasten my pashmina
the peahen spreads its wings
and you turn up the reverb
Linda Black
What doesn’t it mean
The messenger
rang the bell three rings
soothsayer torchlight fingers
tips rat’s tail broomstick . . .
jeopardy discolouration
multiply by two an audience
of one snail in a bottle
something about
a forest
Contributor Notes
Ryan Ormonde
Ryan Ormonde has contributed poems to Spam, Gutter and The Rialto and collaborated on a video poem with poet Karenjit Sandhu for Magma. At present Ryan is working on a second poetry film with artist Madalina Zaharia.
Note on ‘Sugababes Paradox’:
“‘Sugababes Paradox’ adapts text from the Wikipedia page ‘Ship of Theseus’. The subtitles are titles of Sugababes songs. Revising the piece, I added phrases relating to the power of three (incidentally, Three is the title of the third Sugababes album). I saw the Sugababes in their original lineup at the Astoria before it burned down (Siobhán threw me a chupa chup) and in their restored original lineup at the Garage earlier this year thanks to my friend Luke (Mutya waved at me and me alone).”
Richard Skinner
https://richardskinner.weebly.com/lsquocut-uprsquo.html
Richard Skinner has published seven books of poetry. His most recent collections are Dream into Play (Poetry Salzburg, 2022), Cut Up (Vanguard Editions, 2023) & White Noise Machine (Salt, 2023).
Note on ‘Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie, Starfish & Coffee’:
“I started playing around with cut-ups during the first lockdown and now can’t stop making them. The idea behind them is to take two pop songs and cut them together to create a new piece. In this case, the two poems were selected for the similarity of their titles. I find the whole cut-up process is pure alchemy and very powerful.”
Kit Buchan
https://twitter.com/kit_buchan
With his best friend Jim, Kit has won the Stiles & Drewe and Stage Debut awards for new musical theatre. He works for the Observer New Review and the Woodland Trust’s magazine Broadleaf.
Note on ‘Sinatra Sings Sinatra’:
“Attempting a poem as artificial as this one is like riding a mechanical bull: you want to stay loose enough to move with its abstract movements, firm enough to prevent it collapsing into gibberish. It’s terrible to sense a poem dying as you write it, becoming irretrievably rigid or slack, while you try vainly to feed it, water it, prune it back to a healthy stem. My Google Drive sometimes feels like the gruesome laboratory of a misguided quack.”
Alex Glynne
Alex lives in Cornwall, where he works as a tutor and psychoanalytic psychotherapist. He’s had poems published in Ambit, SPAMZINE and has a small pamphlet out with Earthbound press called 10 Windows.
Note on ‘iii’:
“I wrote ‘iii’ (from the sequence ‘@pstorals’) in response to the dissociating effect digital culture has on my experience of the climate crisis. I also wanted to play around with the pastoral resonances of the internet — nostalgia for an infinitely receding ‘golden age’. Meanwhile, the Real keeps intruding on the imaginary surface of the poem in the form of data-storms, melting glaciers etc; which, I suppose, is a metaphor for a larger problem.”
Linda Black
Linda Black is Editor of Long Poem Magazine. She has published four collections with Shearsman – a fifth is forthcoming. The Son of a Shoemaker (Hearing Eye 2012), about Hans Andersen’s early life, plus the author’s illustrations, was the subject of a Poetry Society exhibition.
Note on ‘What doesn’t it mean’:
“It’s hard to say where a poem comes from – I begin with a word (or two), continue (as I do with artwork), discover along the way. The manuscript I’m working on is concerned with the process of writing. I allow what comes to mind to be, then any editing. The form (prose poem or verse) suggests itself – line breaks, the spaces between are important. This one changed its shape.”
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