About the author: Vik Shirley's pamphlet Corpses (Sublunary Editions)
was published in 2020, her collection, The Continued Closure of the Blue
Door (HVTN PRESS), was published in 2021, as was her book of
photo-poetry Disrupted Blue and Other Poems on Polaroid (Hesterglock
Press). Her work has appeared in such places as Poetry London, The
Rialto, Magma, Perverse, Shearsman and 3am Magazine. She is currently
studying for a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal in Poetry at the
University of Birmingham. Vik is Associate Editor of Sublunary Editions,
editor of Surreal-Absurd at Mercurius Magazine, and tweets for Shearsman
Books. "daniil kharms is a ghost on ecstasy as pianos mate with soup.
what a horriful world shirley has made, it's almost as if life is silly
and poetry is a space to affirm that." SJ Fowler, poet who writes his
own bios. Currently active www.stevenjfowler.com "Grotesque, like a
Hieronymus Bosch footlong hotdog with Mark E Smith on onions." Tom Jenks
writes books, reads books and works tirelessly for a better Britain.
"There's a little world in every poem here, uncannily our own and
discombobulatingly other." Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist who
lectures at the University of Birmingham. Introduction The first part of
Grotesquerie for the Apocalypse came out of an intensely creative period
in the first year of my PhD, which explores Dark Humour and the Surreal
in Poetry. Focussing on the grotesque, I was immersed in, and obsessed
with, the work of the Russian-Absurdist, Daniil Kharms, and the strange
and surreal fable-like poems of Russell Edson. My chapbook, Corpses
(Sublunary Editions), was written during this period too. Not since my
discovery of the surreal narratives of James Tate have any writers
resonated with me more than Kharms and Edson. (Tate was a huge influence
on my collection, The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN Press),
and his work was responsible for a defining turning-point in my
writing.) Donald Hall once said, whilst speaking of Edson's work: "It's
fanciful, it's even funny-but his humor carries discomfort with it, like
all serious humor." This "serious humour" is something I strongly
connect with.
