Description
Book SynopsisTo Abandon Wizardry, Matthew Caley's seventh collection, explores a world where it's harder and harder to tell what's real and what's not. Where our political and cultural reality seems so unbelievable, we search for a plot and find one that comes from the Harry Potter playbook. Our sky proves CGI, our touchstones AI. Our screens full of wonders, our streets full of decay. We could nod at Deep Fake, QAnon, fake news versus the 'truth' of official news, all manner of waning national myth or ponder the elsewhere we always think of escaping to, that will no doubt prove equally illusory.
Set within this almost parallel world, To Abandon Wizardry features a long central poem where someone enjoys an alfresco Americano in Shadwell, London, while in dialogue with a mesh-protected sapling that transmits all the polyglot talk of the city. Either side of this we encounter revenants, disembowelled wizards, talking horses and flying houses, as the book forges its aesthetic out of the simulation, hyper-association, and over-stimulation of living in the 21st century. And it's all true.
Trade ReviewMatthew Caley’s sixth collection Trawlerman’s Turquoise is a steer through linguistic rapids – the effect is dizzying, and psychedelic. One is left with the sense that some new order has been made manifest…in Caley’s intoxicated world the urban becomes urbane, lexicon turns lyrical.
-- Cheryl Moskowitz * Magma *
Table of Contents11 prologue 13 The Vulnerable 14 The Archipelagos 16 Bagatelle 17 The Nit Pickers 18 Lynx Litter 19 Luxor 21 The Blunderbuss 23 The Leaf 25 Approaches to a Door 27 The Strop 29 The Spill 30 Wispy Streamers 31 Pabl Piccass 32 Aphid Says 34 Canton for the Stranded 35 The Tickle 36 I Conjured up a Horse 38 Lamantia Street 40 The Scarf 41 from Transmitter 63 Undescended Testicles 64 The Obligations 66 Double-hooped Earrings 67 The Unbalanced 68 Unicorn Street 70 The Confessional 71 from The Drifting Recidivist Says 74 Plume Travelling 76 The Bungalow 78 Horse in the Sea Mist 81 This Pure Child 82 The Height 83 Star-wheel 84 Fusillade 85 Canton for the Wastrel 86 Depot of the Aero-houses 88 The Weathervane 89 Bollo’s Brook 92 The Lynx 94 epilogue
