Glasfryn Project

“Swansea Automatic is Rhys Trimble’s most ambitious work to date, and it confirms his status as the most inventive young poet in Wales”.      (John Goodby)

 

In 1973, Bernadette Mayer and others, including Nick Piombino and Toni Simon, worked their way through a series of radical poetic exercises to produce one of the seminal documents of the new L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry movement. Forty years on, Rhys Trimble has taken the experiments and applied them to the writing of a long, ‘dirty narrative’ poem about Swansea which even Mayer and Co. would have applauded for the risks it takes and the thrills it generates.

 

“How to start something? with my own handwriting—a wooden pen—gone for the cheaper book—not the moleskine—the two pound one [not weight] with5 sections—orange, pink, yellow, green, blue—with a struck bell, with a departure.

This is a practical creative writing manual—I will take all the advice I’m given—I advise myself to choose a springbound book—to be free, to use my own handwriting, to use a wooden pen.”

 

 

Published May 2015.

ISBN 978-0-9928438-4-7

Rhys Trimble says: I wrote this book because my girlfriend was going to Spain with her mother. I read that Bukowski had written post office in two weeks so I challenged myself to write a novel in two weeks. it took about 3 months in the end, or the initial part did: to write it by hand into the ‘novel sized’ ring bound book that I bought from the works for 1.99 with five coloured sections – the typing took about a year. To add a conceptual element to the writing and make the book a kind of ‘creative writing manual’ I searched for some exercises or recommendations that are given to those that want to ‘be creative’ and I hit on the list given at the start of l=a=n=g=u=a=g=e magazine No³ 1973 by Bernadette Mayer. When I found my prose getting dull or repetitive I wrote out one of the experiments (in order) from the list. This is the result.

 

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View all: Aquifer | Posted on 12 May 2015 | 1 Comment »