Biography
Most of my work deals with issues of gender and sexuality: what it means to be 'male' or 'female' in our society, and what it feels like to not conform to those expectations. Sometimes I do this by writing about my own experiences, sometimes I approach the issue by writing about people who embody or interfere with the gendered expectations we have of people.
My poetic influences are varied: I like Fred Seidel, Prynne, Elizabeth Bishop, Angela Readman, Thom Gunn, Ira Lightman, Roz Kaveney, Bukowski, Larkin, Ashbery...a lot of writers I admire and who I think of as influencing my work don't necessarily have a direct influence in terms of form or content, but somehow set the terms of my mental space.
I've had work published in Aesthetica, Fire, Monas Hieroglyphica, SAND magazine, and in two anthologies, with another poem due to be published in a forthcoming anthology from Red Squirrel Press. I've performed in Edinburgh, London, Newcastle, Durham and Darlington, and did an hour of poetry on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square as part of Anthony Gormley's 'One and Other' project. I didn't intend to read for an hour - I wanted to do an interactive poem with the audience, but that didn't quite come off (due to their not being much of an audience at 4am). I did get to do what I'd planned to do on the Plinth with the audience at Newcastle City Library's three-day celebration for the International Day of Human Rights, though, so it worked out okay in the end. In June, I will be performing one of my poems, Rainy Breaktime, as part of the INK festival in Newcastle.
Samples
Heart:Burial
In light diffused by clouds of ice
she stands and holds her shining heart:
a pewter gimcrack, cracker-hatched
and carried, over frost-sharp grass,
to this quarry where she stands in ash,
surrounded by discarded cans.
The shadow of the monument,
black cousin to the Parthenon,
just seems to fall across the sun.
She parts the blades of grass and digs,
one-fingered, quick, an opening.
At sunset, on the first day of the year,
her heart is buried.
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.
Last blog entry
Posted on Tuesday 27th July 2010 11:39 pm
Very late, and I'm browsing the google analytics stats for my blog, mainly because I didn't have them set up before and now that I have, I like playing with my new toy. But aside from finding out that people have searched for my blog using terms like 'keep calm and suck my dick', 'filth without make-up' and, most disturbingly of all, 'Sarah Palin', I also discovered which words I use more than any others in my blog entries. Looking through them and reading them in list form, it occurred to me that they looked a bit like a slightly odd, cut-up, Dadaist poem: not quite a sound poem, but not entirely A-to-B logical either: the kind of thing I can imagine Ira Lightman reading. It looks a little like this:
People, it’s Adam!
Trans post-Emily blog.
Fish, actually.
Comedy, gender –
Man? Woman?
Black work. Feel
Dickinson-ish.
Izzard might!
Funny gay love bodies.
Britain? Lucas? Fuck!
World-wrestling labels,
though, women writing –
course! – won.
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Alison Smiles
Fri 30th Apr 2010 09:26
Many thanks Adam for your comments. Funnily after posting I went downstairs and wrote a dozen more lines and realised that it had veered from physical to whimsical and indeed those last four lines weren't a good fit.
Thank you