Interview with artist & poet Heather Phillipson in The Guardian & on Radio 3's Private Passions. Her sculpture THE END is nominated for the Turner Prize 2022. Poem of...
– it isn’t obvious how all this works – life
goes on but does it go on like spreadable
dairy-grease or more easy-fit bedding?
or does it go on like up-next: unspooled intestines,
indulged false-hope, auto-play: a monologist: your lug-hole?
I say, please – go on – and regret it – I say
life’s a lubricating substance it made these hot-pants
go on like a dream – I say, life goes on
like the first rough rushes, or does it go on
like boots in synchronous lateral excitation
before the bridge collapses?
once life’s gone on far too far
and not wide enough, we’re snagging
when death comes to it but does it
come-to like a coma patient or aroused suspicion
or does it come like a fiery orgasm tableau?
who wouldn’t want to get their gob around
the rich hors d’oeuvres after the rich hors d’oeuvres
the hot ménage new flavour the palate cleanser?
or does life go on like the undertaker’s overcoat
before they lob my bod in a trough of mud (flooded)?
never let it be said we’ve made progress
when the options remain
being burned to a crisp or getting shovelled
*
from more flinching
because I came
through stacks of airport
terminals railway arches security
checkpoints tunnels a revolving door
into the hotel lobby’s free wifi HOTSPOT
with Chopin in the backcloth
making everything personal
on tickertape & CNN’s mouths
permanently overhead leeching terror
into the common cerebrum where chips
get lodged and served with a side
of forcible emotion because
I already came from interspaced days
and nights of recurring feelings
of my dead dog and grandmother
spreading into all stories in newspapers
of exploding torsos exploding dogs
replacement dogs women griefs
close-up eye-witnesses and already
in my body getting bigger and taking
over until passivity was an absurdity
and wasn’t it always and will be
*
TRUE TO SIZE
What if I side-saddled a static motorbike with fewer feelings to confuse the cruising GPS and engine vibrations. I’ve had sex in a lot of places but not on a volcano until he saw me and burst into magma. My flame-retardant centre was his consolation. At the moment, I told him, we’re deep in the mediation of ever more subtly inserted technologies of co-created desire enacting the latest phase of designed living through algorithm. All these high-sugar confectioneries and clone cigarettes haven’t done much for my looks or they’ve done plenty. My face is very me, in use, blood blazing through my everything. My vital life-force! It doesn’t have to be lo-cut to be revealing. No this isn’t fantasy, this is actual real bloody life, mate, so why get married? We’re the only species that wastes time doing it. Marriage – a symbolic and legal portmanteau for maintaining libido and repression particularly in its sagging middle section based on giant wobbling balloons and pet-health-insurance. I can put up with a lot but not blah-blah questions about whether women have got the balls. We’re this close to checking out of planet earth and still coming at you with the indestructibly appealing eco-holes we clench in our panties.
Contents List
9 latest technology
10 Guess what?
12 when did you start feeling like this?
14 it’s not just a conditioning shampoo it’s
15 CHEERS!
19 Take Spanking White Pants
20 some things
25 Earlye in the Morning
29 it’s getting rough for thoughts cut up by conventions we must thump through though it hurts our muscles
30 hankering incarnate & the apocryphal sputum bath-craze
33 Splashy Phasings
35 everything slapped & candied & opening
39 TRUE TO SIZE
41 TRUE TO SIZE
42 TRUE TO SIZE
44 TRUE TO SIZE
46 TRUE TO SIZE
48 TRUE TO SIZE
49 JUNK LOG
53 more flinching
125 Personal Statement
Related Reviews
'For all the playfulness in Instant-flex 718, it also addresses the weighty issues – mortality, the relationship between mind and body, the extinction of species, religion – and its lively combination of intelligence, verve and humour makes it a debut that is both unusually accomplished and unusually pleasurable to read.' - Carrie Etter, Guardian, on Instant-flex 718
'A visual artist’s debut book-length collection, in which a My Little Pony is mutilated for art’s sake and a plate of mashed potato epitomises domestic drift. Levity and a likeable, direct voice make this innovative and entertaining summer reading.' - Maria Crawford, Financial Times Summer Reading Guide, on Instant-flex 718
'In poetry, I loved Emily Berry's Dear Boy (Faber), Heather Phillipson's Instant-flex 718 (Bloodaxe) and the whole back catalogue of Ben Lerner.' - Joe Dunthorne, The Observer's Books of the Year 2013
'Phillipson’s work is often very funny as it rebounds from one untenable erotic or intellectual position to another...sounding like the love child of Frank O'Hara and Rosemary Tonks.' – Sean O'Brien, Guardian
'Heather Phillipson’s poems display heroic bafflement... a humour both quirky and robust.' – Andrew McCulloch, Times Literary Supplement
'Instant-flex 718 is an explosive first collection from a poet and artist who thrills and disconcerts in equal measures. Heather Phillipson's poems fuse subterranean erotic landscapes with the complex pleasures of thought. They conduct a weird, addictive verbal electricity that can both jolt and elate. Handle with care: this book is not for those who like their poetry safely earthed.' – Mark Ford
