Grotesquerie for the Apocalypse

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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.IntroductionThe 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.