Blade Pitch Control Unit (Salt Modern Poets) - Softcover

Bonney, Sean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844712516 ISBN 13: 9781844712519

Publisher: Salt, 2005

Synopsis

Blade Pitch Control Unit is a gathering of Sean Bonney’s work in poetry over the last five years. It collects together all the work from his previous pamphlets that he still feels is valid, plus a number of previously unpublished pieces. The presentation of this work in a single volume makes clear the scope of his project as a psychogeographic/historical exploration of the possibilities of political verse that would seek to obliterate the pitfalls of simple protest or the expression of easily assimilable opinions. The work moves from psychogeographical registerings of Greenwich and the Isle of Dogs at the time of the Millennium Dome, through excavations of the ghosts of millennial heresies still present in contemporary London, and into a charting of the effects of official mendacity on the psyche of any individual citizen who knows that all private experience is collective. The events of recent history play a major role, sometimes obliquely, sometimes less so, but Bonney refuses to allow his voice to be merely an outraged commentary on contemporary woes. Instead, he presents a poetry that makes clear that the protestor is also culpable, but equally a poetry that understands that only through a registering of this position can a way out be found. For Bonney, a poem is typically a highly rhythmic (or arrhythmic) object that seeks through maximum density to communicate a dialectical relationship with the cosmos, and to explore the faultlines of official history and urbanism through which possibilities of liberation can be traced.

About this title

About the Author

Sean Bonney was born in Brighton, grew up in the north of England, and he now lives in London. He has published a number of pamphlets, and his poems and essays have featured in many of the leading innovative magazines. Known as an exhilarating performer of his work, he has performed in London, Cambridge, Portugal, Prague and New York. A part time lecturer, he has taught at Birkbeck College, Roehampton, and the University of Southampton. He died in a tragic accident in 2019.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Document

and soon asylum seekers will

sit in spit in box;

no land to speak of,

as all cities are curdled,

spat through algebraic memory, oblique

and polite. fatwa on numbers

who walk in greater circles,

but cities require danger as

all else is too smooth

like a faked baby neutralised

with nails: Branson as interpreter.

Richard Branson as mass memory.

Richard as mouth that says

run it like a firm

is no distortion, job seekers

recognise the friendly bacteria as

they do not wear ties

and grin in unison in

high alert, wear chemical suits

and join hands to keep

us out, sick bells. competition

is simple: get the best

seekers find the hidden seroxat

under black stones, botox stubble.

insert transients in cellular matter.

insert into property prices a

green dye, watch its progress -

vascular level – roast with garlic,

toss northern terraces to damp

sand, control information and grind

their stones and scatter the

value of land multiplies as

rumours of heritage coagulate like

sucking clams. look, a picture.

put a gate on it.

breathe in good film dust.

interpret the A–Z, any city

as satellite pincer movement, the

implications are that barren. we

recommend hibernation as first investment:

rich people are growing on

shredded voices gather gas underground

& Branson says make adventure

was meant to be great

but well is kinda dull

frames in specific parameters. eat

nice gas, nice exterior, nice

mass memory with running electricity.

the commune an aching sore:

we are all on pills

and torture. we’ll take anything.

Edition details

• Publisher: Salt
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1844712516
• ISBN 13: 9781844712519
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 168