Description
Book SynopsisBlade 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It collects together all the work from his previous pamphlets that he still feels is valid, plus a number of previously unpublished pieces.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.
Trade ReviewThese poems are scores for impassioned recitation, burning with a rare urgency and intelligence . . . They have a raw quality: manic states inscribed in phrases short enough to catch them. Because the poems are written for Bonney's speaking voice, they have an elegant rhythmic flow: this elegance provides a foil for the desperation and violence of the content.
-- Ben Watson * Poetry Review *
Table of Contents
- THE DOMESTIC POEM (2000)
- cross harbour …
- walk on. strike softly away from children …
- It doesn’t matter if music’s attached …
- Fast. Victoria to Warren St
- Mayday
- There’s got to be something …
- Just going down there to post a letter …
- Certain young aristocrats …
- calling all dogs …
- THE ROSE (2000)
- pop stars on Holloway Road
- For Bob, Cobbing Through the Soundhole, Where Cobbing IS
- NOTES ON HERESY (2000-2001)
- Tom O’Bedlam
- Defects in the Structure of the State
- Lyric Poetry: Surveillance
- Confessional Poetry
- Poisons, their Antidotes (2001-2003)
- The Management Consultant Has Gone for Lunch
- Paul Verlaine read poems on Old Compton St
- Expulsions (on Marchmont St with coffee)
- Poisons, their Antitdotes
- FILTH SCREED (2003-2004)
- all poetry that does not …
- stood …
- ant sore …
- sketch …
- questionable savagery …
- thin suns bleat …
- his opened mouth …
- a lattice of swallow-screech …
- this is a shop spurt yellow gas …
- fly track …
- at 9.38 you hear voices …
- alembic strip neutral …
- enabled history on the ant crawl …
- the details at times are as vague as burn screams …
- silver burst …
- the words “we are loyal employees” …
- I don’t …
- 86 him …
- ‘these’ pictures have come in lately …
- click …
- glue, magnetized …
- hold on. does the traffic not worry …
- Branson’s mouth imposed …
- and he, who want to be adverts …
- this is a love poem in 42cm …
- bone sweat …
- lids flicker …
- the map of London …
- survive commerce on …
- nothing of importance …
- BURNT NICKLE (2004-2005)
- morally …
- we understand …
- demand protection for sex dolls …
- social climbing among metals …
- that the police station as system …
- consumerism speaks only …
- on cell wall …
- Verdict :
- Oona King
- DOCUMENT (2005)
- Filter OD
- Document
- Document: No Admittance
- Document: Suicide Note
