Recent Release: Scott Wozniak BUMRUSH THE FANTASY. Flying Wrench Press, 2015 (32 pages)

This poetry collection was self-published by the Southern Oregon resident Scott Wozniak and consists of 28 short free verse poems, which Wozniak terms in his index as ‘explosions’. The poetry is very raw and fledgling and is primarily confessional in style. Some of the poems previously appeared in the small press publications Flash Fiction Magazine, Midnight Lone Boutique and The Five-Two Poems on Crime. Common themes in the collection include, the search for identity, the empowering effect of writing poetry and the need to question and confront established ways of thinking.

(a broadsheet taken from the book- click on to enlarge. Reprinted with the poet's permission)

The word ‘bumrush’ has many connotations and I consulted the Urban Dictionary for the most accurate definition for the collection. I came up with: “To run full speed into something with reckless abandon & fervour, of someone who has nothing to lose.”

The title poem ‘Bumrush the Fantasy,’ the speaker, presumably Wozniak, appeals to readers to rush “mysterious corridors” to find the unexpected, where “eternal buried treasures/ impatiently await” to free their minds. The poem concludes:

recoil from drudgery,

discover the fantasies

that eternities clock

takes quickly away.

Before it’s too late.

In a recent interview, Wozniak says of the poem:

“It was a poem I’d written while I was exorcising some internal demons and battling monkeys that had been hitching a ride on my back for a while and preventing me from actually pursuing poetic endeavours.

It was a poem I wrote, threw in the stack and never looked at again until my wife found it and brought it to my attention.

Then as I reread it, it made total sense to use it for the book’s title since it speaks to the act of doing before it’s too late and how we can all become complacent in our lives and not pursue our dreams because of that loss of drive, hope, desire, unfettered possibility- whatever you want to call it. And in putting the book together, I was reclaiming all of those things after being in a bad place for a long time.”

(a broadsheet taken from the chap- reprinted with the poet's permission)

A strong motif in the collection is, on the surface, one of anarchy: to riot, to smash plate-glass windows, to piss in mail boxes. The cover illustration by Caroline Roose depicts a pack of monkey like humans tossing bricks against an unseen foe. The page numbers are encased in an old-fashioned petrol bomb. Asked recently if he was a revolutionary poet, Wozniak replied his stance was more metaphorical than political:

“Honesty, I don’t see myself as a revolutionary poet at all. I specifically don’t write about politics very often. The reason being is that there are plenty of writers out there more qualified than I. Plus I have a jaded view on the whole political system. I think it’s a complete sham that is so embedded in our way of life that it’s always going to be there and it’s always going to be a dirty, rotten system that needs to be burnt to the ground but never will be. I agree with the concept of Anarchy but think the human race is too messed up to pull it off successfully.

I tend to speak more about personal upheaval and burning the preconceived notions of ourselves and the lives we’ve been programmed to think we need to be living to the ground, so we are free to start fresh and attempt to live more fulfilling lives.”

In the poem ‘Single (sleeper) Cell Organism’ he explicitly suggests that his call to arms is purely literary:

I am a one man

sleeper cell

on a mission

with exploding

vernacularHH

 It can be perhaps argued that Wozniak has bumrushed the publication of this book as it is poorly edited and features a couple of dozen glaring errors. Wozniak craftily says of this:

“Originally, I had every intention of getting it edited and polished up, but the more I looked at it, I felt like, you know what, this needs to be a tad raw if I’m truly going to convey the feelings I felt while working on it. I had this restless urgency pushing me to get it out there and I personally felt that would come across better if it weren’t flawless. 

Plus I’ve always liked things a tad rough around the edges- the people I surround myself with, the music I listen to, the bars I frequented, everything…I find beauty in imperfection. And if this was going to be an exposure of who I am, it had to be messy. If people don’t get that and they see it as a hack job, so be it.”

This is a raw, brave effort by Wozniak to get poetry out on the streets, especially as he writes about his seven year-old son in the poem ‘Don’t You Know I’m A Fucking Star’:

Little

does he know

that

the majority

of the world

could give

a fuck less

about poetry,

and even less

about

mine.

Buy the book here: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=scott+wozniak+bumrush+the+fantasy

Featuring Matt Galletta

A hell of a deal

I met a guy

who said that

whenever he took

one of those

“career aptitude” tests,

he always got the same result:

he should work in sales

or the clergy.

He was good at

reassuring people,

he said.

Good at convincing them.

I think of him

whenever the doorbell rings,

another set of believers

brimming with

pamphlets and tracts.

These people

aren’t selling

rain gutter covers

or magazine subscriptions

but something

much less tangible,

something I can’t afford

even on

their best

instalment plan.

Let it soak

You scrub

at the frying pan.

Burnt bits of egg

are glued to the

stainless steel.

The hot water tap

bleeds lukewarm

and your back aches

and the day outside

is already dead.

Stop.

A little soap,

a little water,

a little time.

Let it soak.

By morning,

one quick swipe

of the sponge

will get the job done.

Funny

how much easier

things are

once you stop

trying so hard.

Moth

She finds

a dead moth

in the carton of

dry pasta

like the

dusty brown prize

at the bottom

of the world’s worst

box of cereal.

Customer Service

You stand and wait

with the phone

jammed up to your ear,

bending cartilage,

crushing blood vessels.

The hold music

is as awful as expected,

made worse by

intermittent static

that fills the hollow

in your skull.

The music stops,

and you hear several clicks.

You think it’s your chance now,

but then the recording

starts in:

Please stay on the line

for the next available representative.

The music

starts again.

You don’t hang up.

After a few decades,

you start to get used to it.

You don’t even

remember

what it is

you’re calling about.



Bio: Matt Galletta lives in upstate New York. A book of poetry, The Ship is Sinking, is available at Epic Rites Press. Find out more at: http://www.mattgalletta.com/

Book Review: Wolfgang Carstens Enjoy Oblivion. Epic Rites Press, 2015 (53 pages).

Enjoy Oblivion was originally slotted to be published by Rusty Truck Press and later Concrete Meat Press but due to extensive delays, Carstens decided to publish the book in an expanded edition through his own publishing company, Epic Rites Press. This collection consists of 33 poems, up from the original 17. Carstens’ long-time collaborator, Janne Karlsson, the Swedish artist, provides 14 full-page complimentary illustrations.

Most of the newly added material to the collection comprise the first 11 poems. These poems are united in Carstens’ favourite topic: death. Death is just around the corner but people like ‘Danny’ think they are “invincible” or like John Ritter in ‘despite’, money & fame will never be able to save you when “your number is up.”

In ‘we’ Carstens pays a tribute to Joseph Conrad who once brilliantly wrote that the sum total of human endeavour could be written on a cigarette paper: “We are born. We suffer. We die.” Although Carstens sees life as “essentially meaningless” he ends the poem with a dirge of hope:

birthdays

and funerals

are

inconsequential.

what

is in between

should be

celebrated.

Also notable is the poem ‘today’ in which the speaker, presumably Carstens, contemplates “the hour” of his end. He wonders whether our lives “were more/ than meat/ and bone.”

The remainder of the collection are essentially poems of hate towards Carstens’ father.  Many are directly addressed to the old man who messed around with other women & fucked off when Carstens was a young boy. This part of the collection telescopes Carstens’ thoughts from when he first heard his father was dying, to his eventual death & later his various bitter reflections on his passing. Carstens grieves intensely but not for the old man, but rather for the relationship with his dad he never had & for the grief his father had inflicted on his family.

‘I just heard’ sets a caustic tone for this section. The speaker discovers that his father is on his death-bed and is asking for him. The old bastard “has nobody” else and is belatedly trying to reconcile with his son to perhaps relieve his guilt before he dies. Carstens, understandably, cannot forgive his father for being abandoned as a child & is totally contemptuous of him. All he can utter is a trite, dismissive: “Goodbye Dad.”

In ‘if you go’ someone warns the speaker that his father’s body is so swollen that he ‘probably/ won’t recognise him.’ He tersely adds, “I hardly/ remember/ what he/ looked like/ before.”

In one of the stronger poems in the collection ‘you never’, the speaker furthers this idea of estrangement in a simple but deeply personal way by directly speaking to his deceased father. Carstens expresses how damaged he is inside and how his father’s own acts of irresponsibility have also had unseen consequences in the upbringing of his own family:

you never

taught me

how to shoot a puck,

talk to girls,

make friends,

handle peer pressure,

or fight

you never once

helped me

with my homework.

the only lesson

you ever taught me

was accidental.

by

your

example

i learned

how not

to be

a

father.

(The poem has been published with the permission of the author)

Karlsson’s subdued, simple caricatures in this collection often represent Carstens as a lonely child staring blankly at a ball or puck. Others show the old man pissed-off, guzzling beer, or as in the illustration for the poem ‘I was’, he indifferently kicks the boy’s soccer ball away as he cuddles his girlfriend, Wolf & his mother look on from the distance. Karlsson’s drawings are unique & add a curious layer of existential ennui to Carstens’ work.

The latter part of the collection reveals Carstens’ response to the news that his father has died. In ‘driving home’ when he learns of his father’s death, he sees a rat in the street and scathingly says to him, “it/reminded/ me/ of/ you.” In the title poem ‘no’ the poet writes contently that his father has not been given a funeral nor a burial plot and has been justly banished from the family forever:

no

obituary.

no

funeral.

no

cemetery plot.

only

vanishing

and

absence.

just

how you

honored

Mom.

enjoy

oblivion,

Dad.

In Carstens’ world, less is certainly more and the longer he writes, the more savagely he pares back his language to the bone. In his deceptively simple use of language in ENJOY OBLIVION, he shares with us a huge range of intense human emotions which have impacted upon him as a young child: hatred, regret, grief, rage.

Yet his parting shot in ‘death’ the last poem in the collection is again a positive one. Despite it’s brevity:

life

sure was

fun

while it

lasted,

wasn’t it?

Buy ENJOY OBLIVION here: http://www.wolfgangcarstens.com/enjoy-oblivion.html

Graphic Book Review/ Interview: Janne Karlsson Embracing the Flames. Leaf Garden Press, 2015 (69 pages).

Embracing the Flames is the Swedish illustrator, Janne Karlsson’s latest book. It consists of 63 self-contained sketches which characteristically castrate mainstream cultural norms. Karlsson’s bleak landscapes are littered with dead trees, piles of human skulls, nooses and bottles of booze. There are “sick bastards” going nowhere & losers searching for unanswerable questions. Like us, they live in a world where religion is phoney & hateful and death is always only a heartbeat or two away.

The title poem is ironic in that it reveals an intensely vulnerable side to the artist. The first three captions boldly state, “We were born to embrace the flames, to kiss the fire, to eat the torch.” Instead of leaping headlong into “the fire” our hero Janne is later to be seen as prostrate, unable to move. He concedes, “I don’t burn very well without you honey. I don’t burn at all.”

Karlsson was born to create and his work has a rapid-fire, spontaneous feel to it. In the interview which follows, Karlsson says he works quickly & without much revision. He has a strong, intuitive feeling especially when the job is done, “If the ‘feel’ of the piece is right, then the drawing is right too.” He further reckons, “everything looks better when you keep it simple. Also, the older I get, the more impatient I become. I need to make it fast and get onto the next project.”

This manic fury to get it down & then to move on means Karlsson’s work is continuous. He simply creates without too much intellectualising about it. Consequently, his art is usually piece-meal rather than a longer sustained activity.

Although these pieces are largely independent of each other, Karlsson explores many common themes throughout: the failure of relationships, solitude, depression, pain & the possibility of redemption.

Karlsson’s work is edgy & extremely varied in subject matter. Sometimes his art expresses a gritty sense of triumphantalism, yet in the next panel or two, you might feel a deflated, gob-smacked melancholia.You might laugh yourself stupidly over several pages & then you might get an uncertain, creeping sense that the composer’s walls are only loosely flailed together by some dodgy sticky tape.

(all illustrations reprinted with the approval of the artist)

This is a mature, independent series of surreal drawings by Karlsson. He presents a fascinating world of characters who are essentially in search of love & meaning. Yet the people he portrays are largely seen as trapped by personal deficiencies and larger inexplicable cultural & political forces. Karlsson transcends these boundaries thru his skill at consistently illustrating how badly people are fucked up.

INTERVIEW WITH JANNE KARLSSON- 13 FEBRUARY 2016

Janne, when did you first realise you had a knack for drawing? What sort of sketches did you accomplish then?

“I guess it occurred to me as a child when my classmates hung over my bench, laughing at my drawings and asked me to draw cartoons of the teachers, often in obscene situations. Which I gladly did.”

Who were some of your early influences?

“Don Martin and MAD magazine. Later on, in my teens, American and South European underground artists.”

I have to ask this but did you have a happy childhood?

“I was fed, I had roof over my head and I was able to breathe.”

When did you start publishing your work and what were some of the places where it first appeared?

“My first hits were in local papers. I recall I won the second prize in some drawing contest. I was probably 9-10 years old. My first ‘real’ published piece (where I was being paid royalty) was in a Swedish comic magazine named MegaPyton. It was in 1991. A horrible comic strip it was.”

How did you arrive at your current style of illustration?

“ I was fed up with drawing these endless details, and kind of realized that everything looks better when you keep it simple. Also, the older I get, the more impatient I become. I need to make it fast and get onto the next project.”

Do you have a set routine when you go about drawing & writing? Do you create everyday? Do you work quickly without much revision?

“No. I draw because I have to. It could be anywhere, anytime, in any medium. Drawing is what keeps me somewhat mentally stable. Yes, I pretty much create everyday. My anxiety never takes a rest. Quickly and very seldom with any revision. If the ‘feel’ of the piece is right, then the drawing is right too.”

Your work has appeared in over 300 magazines worldwide and you have published several books to date. What have been some of your major achievements to date?

“Drawing for and being paid by both the Catholic Church of Sweden and the Hells Angels at the same time.”

No one is really listening to us right now, but tell me mate, are you really like many of the mad fuckers that you create on your pages?

“Hahaha! You´ll have to ask my girlfriend!”

Turning to one of your latest books, Embracing the Flames why did you decide to publish it through Leaf Garden Press, rather than say, your own publishing company?

“Because I´m lousy at marketing. Come the day when I can actually make some sales and profit off the Svensk Apache books, I´ll never EVER turn to any other publisher.”

Is there much ink left up there? What current projects are you working on now?

Have you ever seriously contemplated longer projects, such as a graphic novel?

“I´m always working on several projects. Currently it´s 2-3 chapbooks with my dear friend Wolfgang Carstens, and there´s an illustrated poetry collection in Swedish with Emma Henriksson and Stewe Sundin. I´m also working on another Svensk Apache anthology which will feature 10-12 brilliant poets from Sweden, USA and Canada.”

Thanks again Janne for your time!

 Bio: Janne Karlsson is an artist from Sweden. His surreal and grotesque comics and illustrations have been published in over 300 magazines around the world, and his many books are available at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AJanne%20Karlsson

You can reach him at: jan-karlsson@hotmail.com

Visit his poorly updated website: www.svenskapache.se

Buy Embracing the Flames here: http://leafgardenpress.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/embracing-flames-by-janne-karlsson.html