Marcus Slease

Marcus Slease (born April 6, 1974, Portadown, N. Ireland) is a contemporary poet and fiction writer. He is the author of four books of poetry, Mu (Dream) So (Window), From Smashing Time, Hello Tiny Bird Brain, Godzenie, and a novella, The House of Zabka. He is a graduate of the creative writing program at UNC Greensboro. As of 2009, he lives in London and teaches at Richmond American University

Life
Marcus Slease was born in Portadown, N. Ireland but has lived all over the world. His work is uniquely migratory, multi-lingual and pan-global. His work is influenced by the language of commerce, pop culture, the surreal, and the languages of slang. He has helped curate two special editions of the literary journal Past Simple. Issue 6 focused on experimental poetry from the UK and Ireland and issue 9 focused on contemporary Polish and Danish poetry in translation (co-edited with the Polish poet Grzegorz Wroblewski). His poetry and fiction have appeared in various literary journals in the U.S., Norway, Poland, and the U.K. His poetry has been translated and published in Polish. He has collaborated with British poets Tim Atkins, SJ Fowler, Richard Barrett, and Jeff Hilson, the American poet Brian Howe and the Canadian poet Peter Jaeger. Slease is well known for his performances. He has performed the work of Grzegorz Wroblewski in English translation to music and has performed his work at various art galleries, such as The Parasol Unit in London, and has been a guest of honour at various literary festivals, such as the Prague Microfestival and Soundeye festival in Cork, Ireland

Works

 * Mu (Dream) So (Window). Poor Claudia. 2012.
 * from Smashing Time. mipoesias. December 2011.
 * Hello Tiny Bird Brain. Knives Forks and Spoons. January 1, 2012. ISBN 978-1907812583.
 * Godzenie. Blazevox. June 10, 2009. ISBN 978-1935402497
 * Dear World and Everyone In It (New “British” Poetry). Bloodaxe. February 21, 2013. ISBN 978-1852249496
 * "The Pink Slip." Word Riot. April 2013.
 * "Public Spaces." Coconut Magazine. April 2013.
 * "The Shark is Getting Married." NAP Magazine. March 2013.
 * "Cinderella Cop." Banango Street. Winter 2013.
 * ""Four Poems by Marcus Slease." "Indigest Magazine." December 6, 2012.
 * "The Cows Said MU." Thought Catalog. November 8, 2012.
 * "The Arrangement." Monkeybicycle. January 2013.
 * "From The Heyday." Poor Claudia. November 2012.
 * "Mating Rituals." So and So Magazine. Summer 2012.
 * "Immigrant Songs." Everyday Genius. June 24, 2011.
 * "From Smashing Time"." 3AM Magazine. April 2011.
 * "From Spanish Fork." Past Simple Magazine. December 2010.
 * "Please Stand By." Spork Magazine. Summer 2005.
 * "Introduction to Logic." Octopus Magazine. Winter 2004.
 * "Under My Wig". Shampoo Magazine. April 2004.
 * "From Conversations with Kafka." Typo Magazine. Summer 2004.
 * "What Happens." Diagram Magazine. Summer 2004.

Critical response
Matthew Dickman (Poetry Editor of literary journal Tin House): "The new, and beautiful, chapbook of poetry from Poor Claudia is amazing! This collection by London poet Marcus Slease, titled Mu (Dream) So (Window), will make you wish there were more than the thirty pages of poetry included in this collection. These are modern lyric ballads that will knock your English-wool socks off!"

Michael Zand (Iranian poet and critic): "Slease’s nomadic poetics are evident throughout the sprawling and multi-layered geography of from Smashing Time but it is his encounters with the culture of the settled mainstream metropolis which is most affecting. There is no fixed destination in the nomadic trail, on the occasional hint of a quixotic oasis in the form of the semi-mythical “Wood Green”. The result is a poetry that is playful, life-affirming and melodic but that ultimately undermines the vacuous pomposity of the popular culture Slease encounters."

Gabriel Gudding (American poet and essayist): "These are not merely some of the most extraordinary lyrics about central European urban realities since the death of the great Polish experimental poet Miron Bialoszewski. They are, simply put, some of the most extraordinary lyrics I have ever read about how to live with disciplined joy in the continual alienation that is urban life. GODZENIE is a book about how to live in the midst of hardship by doing the only thing fully possible: reconciling the continual loss of the here with the continuous arrival of a now. So, here at last is the expatriot heir of Bialoszewski. Strange that he should be Irish. Fitting that he should write with a mind as laminar, with a heart as wise, with lines as strange, as his predecessor."

Geraldine Monk (British poet): ‘Word ruptures: watching the words watching the mind write the words write the mind’ - this is an extract from the final section of Marcus Slease’s Godzenie and it would be hard to find a more apt description of his modus operandi as he trawls through the funny, frightening, sexy, sterile, prosaic, surreal, boring, brutal and tender landscape of 21st century post-communist Poland. Slease is in his element as he shows us the ghost in the boat, the loud sausages and the bottomless prayers of a country in a state of flux. A marvellous debut collection"

Joseph Donahue (American poet, critic and editor): "In the mind of Marcus Slease, what lies between Ireland and America is Poland, a Poland that turn out to be poetry itself, a land of extravagance and lack, where a poet might go, might live, might write a poetry where sensations rush towards us abrupt and energized, and contraries thrive in a godzenie of the simultaneous. Life in this Poland is fast, curious, subtle, blunt, bodily, complex as hell, and edging relentlessly toward song. In this first volume of the epic of his wandering, Marcus Slease has written an exhilarating book."

Tim Atkins (poet and lecturer in creative writing): "No name but love, indeed, for Marcus Slease, in this exciting collection of small, surprising, lyrical poems which continue (very nicely, thank you) the ideas and methods of such poets as Clark Coolidge in At Egypt, Phil Whalen in Scenes of Life at the Capital, and Roy Kiyooka in Kyoto Airs. The writer's eye & his heart remain open throughout this book, the language is clean, clear & refined, and one comes out exhilarated both by what Slease sees & by the way that he says it. In a world of spam (to paraphrase the author) he gives us (good) ham. With a big side of kimchee. Reader, read on! Because Mu! So! –in Japanese = Emptiness! Yes!"

Catherine Wagner (American poet and academic): "This poetry has seen a lot, has seen the world, but it catapults onward unjaded, grimy/sparkly, "huffing life." If poetry is throught [thought/through/through it/rough/route/wrought] then Marcus Slease is on its tube train and he's pulling out the stops, he'll "unlatch/the room" you read in."

Interviews
"Though the Maintenant series tries not to overstate the importance of the poet’s origin, practicality alone demands an attempt to show the range of European poetries with a representative range of nations. However in actually seeking out those poets creating exciting, original, genuinely evolutionary work, we find many cannot be tied to one single nation – they are migratory, multi-lingual – pan-European if not pan-global. Marcus Slease fits this archetype more than most. By birth he stands as the first Northern Irish poet to feature in our series. However by experience he is a poet of England, America, Poland, Italy, Turkey…too. Unsurprisingly he is an adroit and worldly writer, defined by his ability to remain elastic and fluid, and utterly unpretentious in his idiom, and yet fulfilling and resonant in his tone. His poetics are extremely contemporary, and yet they seem to maintain the confidence and solidity of time past. A major feature of the current London scene."