It was only after we booked Chris McCabe for his new course 'The Plural Experiment', that we found out that his poetry was actually pretty 'experimental'. We should have guessed from the title really. Anyway, we thought we'd try and see how experimental he really is by giving him an unrelated task whilst at the same time ripping off the Metro. We asked him questions, to which he was only allowed to answer in 140 characters. He passed our experimental test, and he also gave us a poem! To book on to his course, which focuses on the any number of poetic tropes bordering the norm: the tradition of experimentation, Fluxus, Concrete poetry, Projective Verse, randomness, using the syllable, simultaneity etc, click here.
What are you up to at the moment?
I’m busily working with Salt on my next book THE RESTRUCTURE which will be out next year. The book fuses two strands together, of being in Lo
In where?!
London through the financial crisis whilst simultaneously becoming a father in difficult circumstances due to my child’s health when he was
…What was he?
A baby!
Aw! Tell me a bit about the cover of your next book?
The cover of the book shows a Gherkin with a teat from a baby’s milk bottle on the top.
Ah I see, mixing finance and parenthood. Nice. Anything else in the pipeline for your work?
I’m also about to embark on the second phase of my collaboration with Tom Jenks. We used a blog performance to create work for a live event
Live event? Do tell!
At RichMix in east London in October, called Camarade, organised by Steven Fowler. We’re now working towards a second performance for Januar
Your first collection, The Hutton Inquiry, includes a sequence of poems that chronicle the circumstances surrounding the death of government science advisor Dr David Kelly in 2003 and Britain’s involvement in the war in Iraq. What did you hope to gain from doing this?
To oust the New Labour Government and sell thousands of copies of the book. As the second didn't happen the Government remained unruffled
Are you finding anything of worth in the Leveson inquiry?
That Rupert Murdoch was probably responsible for agitating the August Riots that took the focus off his own anti-social ethics of hackings
Controversial! Poetry International states you’re part of the MTV generation. How do you feel about this?
That would suggest I had a short attention span
Who are you reading at the moment?
Oliver Twist and Gerard Manley Hopkins – Hopkins is like the ‘Musical’ version of Oliver! in poetry form
What will you be focusing on in your Poetry School course?
Kinetic poems, space disappearance, manifesto disagreements, non-textual registers, seed texts, random operators, the syllable, the breathe,
How would you define experimental poetry?
This may take a little time : poetry that creates its own forms in real-time through assimilation of processes from the living world rather
Than?
than the grooves laid down by previous literatures. Most experimental poetry
doesn’t know what the end result its form will take until it ar
Ar?..
rives at its moment of completion (although completion is often not the same as for the well-made poem - with a lot of experimental poetry
Yes..
it only makes sense to talk of 'versions'). The seminal poet of this kind of approach would be the American poet Jackson Maclow who generate
This is fascinating but perhaps people should sign up to your course to hear the rest and have a go at writing in this way! Finally, though, Any advice for poets starting out?
Whenever you receive a magazine you have a poem in always make a point of reading a poem in it by another poet before you read your own
--------
MR SCHMIGGLES
Walked
four miles to give 3,000 to the estate agents.
After the wait at
the east end checkout we eat
jam sandwiches in the bluebottle
static of the cemetery.
The child was named Mr Schmiggles, his
forefinger
confounded science as we crossed from the hospital
into
a public house called THE PERSEVERANCE
(he slept soundlessly
through three bottles of red).
The
communist child, we found, that receives
a piggybank at birth,
hurls cubes of curdled milk
onto a Happy Pig bib. The finger was
raised
through Rapunzel
which seized the actor
to point back at Schmiggs – but speak
instead
to the papier-mache shawl – “get that baby out of
here”.
He struggled to purse the red buds of his lips.
The
doctor introduced Sir Roses of mud-brown liver
and mistaking
Schmiggles for a Freddy Hutchinson
said: “we want to remove his
head”. Schmiggles
closed the loveheart wishbone of his jaws
and
with the thrash of a mako shark
clamped his mouth around the
pitted soother
of his nose (another bald man wasting conception
time).
Then goes Schmiggs in polka-dot mits
orchestrating a
mash-up between a giant bee
and the lyrics of Mark E. Smith.
In
the electric chair of hiccoughs
like a Jack-in-the-Box with
Tourrettes,
a rubik’s cube of wind making itself red
in his
stomach as he depuzzles flatulence.
Then
Lord Schmiggles of Schmiggville retesting
the Schmiggleometer to
avert a Schmiggle-ectomy
– schmig schmig schmig schmig – all
schmigged-out
in the schmiggle machine waiting with a gurn in his
eyes
for someone to start the journey: Let
us go then, You and I…
Falls
asleep with the latch off his dreams
black feet shuffling at the
edge of consciousness.
On
Christmas morning Schmiggs robed as Santa
and making a note of our
hopes he sat on our
knee.
Entered as Baron Von Schmiggles in Lindbergh collar
hitting
the butter at the buffet bar, absorbed in his
first coloured
lights like an ABC of amphetamines –
Christmas bulbs, full moon,
blue swallows –
entranced with the digital Mozart of the green
caterpillar.
We
all wanted Cinderella to fall for Buttons but the lesson
is that
the woman wants to dabble with The Prince.
We watched the drunks
crab & morph in the fog
compelled homewards by anecdote &
memory.
Sometimes Schmiggles was unsure how these things worked
–
the toddler with an iron whip, the snowman saddled
on a
Harley – wanting to know life – & melting to wet on the seat.
If you would like to sign up to Chris's course, 'The Plural Experiment', click here, or give us a call on 0207 582 1679.
