The Importance of Being Aloof

Comment, critical and creative writing from Charlie Baylis

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

Carpe noctem

translated from the Spanish of Aurora Luque Carpe noctem darling, seize the throb of desire like a blind psychic hunks of pubis, constellations, the break and break kisses patterned by waves & spirals thousands of arteries flowing swaying like seaweed. Carpe mare. The seduction of light, slits opening like smooth sea-anemones hair on the shore, splashed with thirst. Desire is lifting the destiny of the sea into the body. ______ Carpe noctem Carpe noctem, amor. Coge el brusco deseo ciego como adivino, los racimos del pubis y las constelaciones, el romper y romper de besos con dibujos de olas y espirales. Miles de arterias fluyen mecidas como algas. Carpe mare. Seducción de la luz, de los sexos abiertos como tersas actinias, de la espuma en las ingles y las olas y el vello en las orillas, salpicado de sed. Desear es llevar el destino del mar dentro del cuerpo.

_________

This is my translation, written for personal pleasure and should not be reprinted without permission.

The poem comes from Carpe amorem (Editorial Renacimiento).

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

Moon-Rare

translated from the Spanish of Javier Egea

i

il y a des gens quelque part qui n’en peuvent plus de silence Louis Aragon

There where the islands where eyelids float those black islands the last secret sands there when the lustre of conquest is over there where the last siren calls little black pearl where the black islands there where maybe treasure chests were glimpsed No No this was not the place I always wanted for you avenues without whips squares without the fainting of pale faces splashing, collapsing while bleeding and falling forever from the moss of the gargoyles and the scars over vast kingdoms of labyrinths and moles falling Maybe it was possible perhaps when the eyes of the courtyard rained I thought at least perhaps I’d plunder these black islands to honour your body to honour crosses on a map of fire No no it wasn’t this place not a stolen adventure never given to you But I hear the cannons blast against walls & dreams everything falling quiet before temples higher than the dawn all the arms closing worlds they’d imagined from the sights of shivering nights, their silence & my eyes now lost - clothes left on hangers without the moon - between seven square meters of stampeding horses they go searching for your lost eyes for your forests without the gallop of horses On entering seven by seven wells seven waves seven bodiless lips to the hinges’ worn salute I always reply: I live in this palace through kingdoms of cold of cold I go down to the caves of 2.°B no one with that key no one entering with those eyes seven by seven seas seven solitudes How can I say the name of death is 2.°B? how can I say 2.°B without capsizing in the darkness of doorbells and loneliness? how can I call to no one I am the lover of 2.°B? who takes out the trash of 2.°B? where does the light of 2.°B land? how do you live when your pale name hems in on you? There are nights which offer nothing except blind doves in shop windows There is a place where people can no longer stand the silence Loneliness on the brink of gunpowder loneliness with a jacket on the back of the chair loneliness with a background of bankers loneliness of the towers the crumbling towers a rotten loneliness rowing through veins and sewers No No this was not the place none of these places never more a place

ii.

Il y aura toujours une pelle au vent dans les sables du rêve André Breton

Meanwhile who climbs the steps with the spit of troubled fireflies who as poppy petals meet the ground who meanwhile who lost in the high trenches Lost in the hallways of antique-dealers purchasing silver spiders punching stomachs disguising the keys adding erasures to the destination of fragile packages while in the background birds birds disturbed by the gloom of a caravan of mirrors worry about the records the bookshelves with the black shine of familiar shoes Everything every single butterfly by the velvet crossroad Cameras hidden cameras and the smallest of stuffed eyes Here is where they call to me with drum and mane here is where they hurl me against the blue nets of dreams where nobody here is the horizon of pins I open: the valley where the shirt hangs the valley where at last the trapeze artist stares into puddles of rain stares into the curl of the sail into the nettles’ shadow where the moon stirs fevers into desperate chests staring naked into the skirts of the lake the green-black lake’s greenest nettles Meanwhile the drowned man slowly strikes the black keys the trapeze artist stands alone without sightless nightingales without a partner approaching the trapeze hired by a dream three dives and a death which slips slips slips Meanwhile so much wasted land the drowned man who kisses his drowned stars the drowned people who go blind to the valley with centuries and violets in their cheekbones they go to gouge out the eyes of these wasted valleys

iii.

Ses yeux sont dans un mur et son visage est leur lourde purure. Un mesnsonge de plus de jour, une nuit de plus, il n’y a pas d’aveugles Paul Eluard

Something fades someone besieged by deep initials by tall wolves contemptuous of the orders of snow someone from anywhere but paradise with arms bruised by golden needles someone fades Crumbling on the flicker of damp shadow on the corner’s edge, by rows of crows before shots from strange engravings on the sail the forced sails rolled out as samples of every void the faded roses the ochre the bells of the well fade smelling of open fields of a shirt burned in the rubble of a damp shadow which flickers No No this was not the place the dark orders between barbedwire fences stretching arms and hedgehog stained nails the cabins open for death always trembling arms twisting pushing against loneliness each eye nailed by the desolate crimes of a star No No there are no windows facing no loose hairs on the facing shoulders Fear of the familiar ashes fear of so much satin with motionless wings fear of thousands and of lips and of miles fear tasting of caves blinded by toads fear of their pavements of eyelids and of their profits No I don’t want this for anyone Only an empty glove Only check points and the rain scrawling signatures in white No No this was not the place But look for me here little black pearl expected pearl through the sails of ships dream of me here where the tattoos fade come carrying the words of messenger eagles come to the islands come to my eyes come expected in this and from every cesspit rescue me. ________________________________________________

______________

This is my translation, written for personal pleasure and should not be reprinted without permission.

The poem comes from "Poesía completa (volumen 1)" (Bartleby Editores).

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

Fuck Poetry....Sold out!

The publisher of my seventh poetry pamphlet (chapbook) has written to let me know that the book has sold out.

If you’d like a copy, feel free to send me a message ([email protected]), as I still have a few author copies left. If you’re nice, I might even draw you a picture.

Thank you to everyone who bought a copy. Writing is often a lonely enterprise, so it’s especially gratifying and uplifting to know that people are actually reading the work.

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

Shelter from the Storm

from the Spanish of Benjamín Prado

i

Parked by the ocean I search for words sweet as the shade of trees. The forests are my eyes. The arrival of water is an endless dream. Everything takes on the form of my hand. Windows light up. Some men stare into the darkness, knowing what they want but not knowing what they need.

The sky burns. Hopkins watches the snow fall in the moonlit forest; Robert Lowell looks out from a taxi at the lights of New York. Parked by the ocean, our words were the waves and the castle the waves break against, sweet words, something elusive & impossible to forget.

We watched Milton’s angels & the wild swans of W. B. Yeats sail by. At the end of the poem is death. Angels like the light of a fire. Swans like the shade of the trees.

My father drove used cars, always. On Sunday, almost at dawn, we crossed the city slowly: cold streets, neon signs, dark houses. Those who tell the truth—wrote Paul Celan— speak of shadows. The tiger moon is the first moon—said Ezra Pound. The days were long, but life is short. My father toyed with the radio. I saw electric pylons under the strange sky of factories.

The slowness of the poem stirs water in my hand. The words of now throw a shadow like a garden over things. The shadow of a garden seems like the dark movement of sleeping bodies. The shadow of a garden is silence.

Parked by the ocean, I saw a star fall between the red lights of the harbour & thought about myself.

I close the book. Like webs, like animals, the shadows retreat. The window which illuminates the abyss is also the abyss. I search for words like light rising from the cold night to the blue music of palm trees. The poem is a fountain: I plunge my hand in. The water slides rings on my fingers. The poem is a body: I caress it. The warmth of its skin leaves a hollow animal in my hand.

Parked by the ocean. There are no words like flowering wisteria, no lanterns like a leopard’s heart in golden parks, no books more beautiful than life.

Parked by the ocean, night is the book; death, an apple.

ii

I looked at the illuminated houses along the highway, the trees and the cold of the last window. I looked at the gardens, the sky ripped open by the red letters of hotels. Summer afternoons seared the pigeons’ tiny hearts; the light was the last angel of the night.

I had a balcony on which I read Neruda. From the balcony, we saw storks arriving, swans of the skies, birds shaded by snow.

I had a balcony and I had a wife. From the balcony, we saw the beaches at night and the strange rain of empty roads.

I had a wife, her body built of lonely rooms, lonely words in the cages of red lions, swans devoured by the moon. From the balcony we saw the storm: blue highways, illuminated houses, trees shivering in the cold of the last window, wells offering up little wet hands.

iii

On the other side was the shattered glass of factory windows & the moon of empty airports. On the other side, the lions were dreaming of rain, the water balancing delicately on the leaves of trees.

On the other side, the cats whose hearts the birds picked apart, closed restaurants, light from rooftops where the sky devours the night’s angel.

I looked for words like the serene gaze of a god over the plaza, as in Coleridge’s poem the ocean’s eye looks at the moon—my father would say: when you reach the top of the mountain, keep going up. Implacable words like the wind which shakes the clothes of a statue.

iv

The rivers of the city are strange. They seem like gods lost between blue bars and dirty picnic tables and the small balconies of the suburbs.

Rivers, like trains, approach the names of the cities slowly.

But on summer nights the sound of water enters the rooms, slowly, and follows the slow rhythm of fans and pierces the hearts of sleeping men.

v

In the summer we searched for the heart of the forest. We drove slowly out of the city, without caring the direction the wheels of life were spinning, without searching for paradise, without asking for answers. I said:

sometimes you are what I will never have sometimes you are everything I lost.

Teresa & I lay in the heat of the night, above the radio towers. She held a rose in her hand— the rose of which Milton speaks. All my poems, together, are the name of the angel.

Parked by the ocean, I looked for little paths through the forest, words, like the way the sea’s darkness sweeps over an island— the word, I thought, which separates the ship from the shore.

I stared at my hand writing, searching for words like the sky searches for the cold light of car parks, to write something worth returning to.

Teresa and I lay in the heat of the night, above the radio towers. She held a rose in her hand, the rose of which Milton speaks.

All my poems, together, are the name of the angel.

____________________

COBIJO CONTRA LA TORMENTA

I

Aparcados junto al océano

busco palabras dulces como la sombra de los árboles.

Mis ojos son los bosques.

La llegada del agua es un largo sueño.

Todas las cosas tienen la forma de mi mano.

Las ventanas se encienden. Algunos hombres miran

la oscuridad, saben lo que desean

pero no saben lo que necesitan.

El cielo quema. Hopkins

mira caer la nieve en los bosques nocturnos,

Robert Lowell mira desde un taxi las luces de Nueva York.

Aparcados junto al océano

nuestras palabras eran

las olas y el castillo contra el que dan las olas.

Palabras dulces, algo que no puedas

entender ni olvidar.

Vemos pasar los ángeles de Milton

y los cisnes salvajes de W. B. Yeats.

Al final del poema está la muerte.

Ángeles parecidos a la luz de un incendio,

cisnes como la sombra de los bosques.

Mi padre conducía siempre coches usados.

Los domingos, casi de madrugada,

cruzábamos despacio la ciudad: calles frías,

letreros encendidos, casas oscuras.

Los que dicen -escribe Paul Celan- la verdad

expresan sombras. La primera luna

es del tigre -decía Pound. Los días

eran largos, pero la vida es corta.

Mi padre buscaba estaciones de radio.

Yo veía las torres de la luz, el cielo

extraño de las fábricas.

La lentitud de los poemas mueve el agua de la mano.

Las palabras de ahora

arrojaban su sombra como un jardín

encima de las cosas.

La sombra de un jardín

parece el movimiento oscuro de los cuerpos dormidos.

La sombra de un jardín es el silencio.

Aparcados junto al océano,

vi una estrella caer entre las luces rojas de la costa y pensé en mí.

Cierro el libro: como animales, como redes,

las sombras se retiran. La ventana

que ilumina el abismo, es también el abismo.

Busco palabras como la luz que sube desde el frío

de la noche al sonido azul de las palmeras.

El poema es una fuente: hundo

en él la mano, el agua pone anillos en mis dedos.

El poema es un cuerpo: lo acaricio,

la humedad de su piel deja en mi mano

un animal vacío.

Aparcados junto al océano

no hay palabras hermosas igual que enredaderas,

luces con corazón de leopardo en el oro de los parques;

no hay libros más hermosos que la vida.

Aparcados junto al océano

la noche es el libro; la muerte, una manzana.

II

Yo miraba las casas encendidas junto a la autopista,

los árboles y el frío de las últimas ventanas.

Miraba los jardines,

el cielo destruido por las letras rojas de los hoteles.

Las tardes de verano

abrasaban el pequeño corazón de las palomas

y la luz era el último ángel de la noche.

Yo tenía un balcón donde leía a Neruda.

Desde el balcón, veíamos llegar a las cigüeñas:

cisnes del cielo, pájaros trazados por la nieve.

Yo tenía un balcón y tenía una mujer.

Desde el balcón, miraba las playas de la noche

y la lluvia extraña de las carreteras vacías.

Yo tenía una mujer, su cuerpo construido en cuartos solitarios,

palabras solitarias entre leones rojos

y cisnes devorados por la luna.

Desde el balcón, miraba la tormenta. Había

autopistas azules

y casas encendidas,

árboles deshechos por el frío de las últimas ventanas,

pozos que nos tendían pequeñas manos húmedas.

III

Al otro lado había los cristales rotos de las fábricas

y la luna de los aeropuertos vacíos.

Al otro lado, la lluvia ponía en los árboles

sueño de los leones y equilibrio del agua.

Al otro lado había el gato con el corazón comido por los pájaros,

restaurantes cerrados, luz de las azoteas

donde el cielo devora el ángel de la noche.

Yo buscaba palabras

parecidas

a la mirada quieta del dios sobre la plaza

-igual que en el poema

de Coleridge el ojo del océano

mira la luna- y mi padre decía: cuando llegues

a la cumbre de la montaña, sigue subiendo.

Palabras implacables como el viento que mueve

la ropa de una estatua.

IV

Los ríos de las ciudades son extraños,

parecen dioses perdidos entre bares azules

y merenderos sucios

y pequeñas terrazas de extrarradio.

Los ríos, como los trenes,

llegan despacio al nombre de las ciudades.

Pero en las noches de verano

el sonido del agua

entra despacio en las habitaciones

y sigue el ritmo lento de los ventiladores

y atraviesa el corazón de los hombres dormidos.

V

En verano, buscábamos el corazón del bosque.

Conducíamos fuera de la ciudad, despacio,

sin importarnos en qué sentido giraban las ruedas de la vida,

sin buscar paraísos y sin pedir respuestas.

Yo decía

                algunas veces eres

lo que nunca tendré,

algunas veces eres todo lo que he perdido.

Ella y yo tumbados en el calor de la noche,

más allá de las torres de la radio.

Ella leva en las manos una rosa

de la que habla Milton.

Todos mis versos, juntos, son el nombre del ángel.

Aparcados junto al océano.

Yo buscaba pequeñas carreteras

forestales, palabras como el modo en que llega

la oscuridad del mar sobre una isla

-la palabra, pensé, que separa un barco de la costa.

Miro mi mano escribir, busco palabras

igual que el cielo busca la luz helada de los aparcamientos.

Escribir algo donde regresar.

Ella y yo tumbados en el calor de la noche,

más allá de las torres de la radio.

Ella lleva en las manos una rosa

de la que habla Milton.

Todos mis versos,

juntos,

son el nombre del ángel.

_____________________________________

This is my original translation. The poem is taken from Benjamín Prado's "Cobijo contra la tormenta (Poesía Hiperión, 1995)" . Please do not reprint without permission.

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

some poets, their deaths

JM Basquiat - Untitled ('82)

after - & celebrating - Luna Miguel's Museo de Cánceres

Charlie Baylis: living / Cancer of ego

Luna Miguel: living / Cancer of candy

Emily Berry: living / Cancer of the possible

Jack Underwood: living / Cancer of sadness

Charles Baudelaire: dead / Cancer of opium

Jack Kerouac: dead / Cancer of trousers

Charles Bukowski: dead / Cancer of lemons

Selima Hill: living / Cancer of the climbing frame

Sally Rooney: living / Cancer of alter-ego

Elizabeth Duval : living / Cancer of honey

Wayne Holloway Smith: living / Cancer of Manchester United

Luke Kennard: living / Cancer of the scarf

Matthew Welton: living / Cancer of lego

Andrew Duncan: living / Cancer of rust

Sean Bonney: dead / Cancer of blackbirds

Sarah Kane: dead / Cancer of the 80s

Danez Smith: living / Cancer of America

Claudia Rankin: living / Cancer of America

Sara Torres: living / Cancer of nymphomania

Poppy Cockburn: living / Cancer of know-it-all

Sam Riviere: living / Cancer of the throat

Wallace Stevens: dead / Cancer of peignoir

John Keats: dead / Cancer of the flute

George Byron: dead / Cancer of pansexual

William Shakespeare: dead / Cancer of pansexual

Yoko Ono: living / Cancer of the husband

Maria Sledmere: living / Cancer of the rainbow

Nadia de Vries: living / Cancer of success

Katherine Maris: living / Cancer of darling

Geraldine Clarkson: living / Cancer of more darling

Hera Lyndsey Bird / Cancer of whales

Dylan Thomas: dead / Cancer of Wales

Aaron Kent: living / Cancer of Wales

Blossom Hibbert: living / Cancer of 2008

Ted Hughes: dead / Cancer of the wife

Serge Gainsbourg: dead / Cancer of tarmac

Nick Makoha: living / Cancer of marmalade

Andrew Taylor: living / Cancer of the 1920s

Roberto Bolaño: dead / Cancer of Jimmy Fallon

Ernesto Castro: living / Cancer of monogamy

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

writing poetry in the land of the idiots

from the Spanish of Roberto Bolaño Rejections from Faber, Bloodaxe, Carcanet, and no doubt Bad Betty & Nine Arches too. A no from Guillemot, Out-Spoken, Broken Sleep Books…. Every publisher...Every reader Every sales manager… Under the bridge, the rain pouring, a golden opportunity to see myself: Like a cobra in the North Pole, but writing. Writing poetry in the land of the idiots. Writing with my son on my knee. Writing until night falls with the roar of a thousand demons. The demons which will carry me to hell, but writing.

_______________________ Mi carrera literaria Rechazos de Anagrama, Grijalbo, Planeta, con toda seguridad también de Alfaguara, Mondadori. Un no de Muchnik, Seix Barral, Destino…Todas las editoriales… Todos los lectores… Todos los gerentes de ventas… Bajo el puente, mientras llueve, una oportunidad de oro para verme a mí mismo: como una culebra en el Polo Norte, pero escribiendo. Escribiendo poesía en el país de los imbéciles. Escribiendo con mi hijo en las rodillas. Escribiendo hasta que cae la noche con un estruendo de los mil demonios. Los demonios que han de llevarme al infierno, pero escribiendo

________________

This is a poem from "La Universidad Desconocida" - it's my translation, please do not reprint without permission.

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

Casida de la rosa

federico garcía lorca

the rose did not look for dawn eternal on her petals it longed for something else. the rose did not look for science or shade  on the cusp of flesh & dream,  it longed for something else. the rose  did not look for a rose  at peace under the sky  it longed for something else.

____________________________

La rosa no buscaba la aurora: casi eterna en su ramo, buscaba otra cosa.  La rosa, no buscaba ni ciencia ni sombra: confín de carne y sueño, buscaba otra cosa.  La rosa, no buscaba la rosa. Inmóvil por el cielo buscaba otra cosa. _________________________

"Casida de la rosa" was originally published in Diván del Tamarit, in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War, in which the author, Federico García Lorca, was murdered.

My translation is a gift for Irene Cortes Arranz. Please do not reprint without permission. Charlie xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

troppo mare from the spanish of javier egea i. i miss the sea so much, sky so strange shaking light over the isleta, yet not the shipwreck expanding on the shore in ropes, in rigging, in masts, the groan of sails, tackle & nets appearing as lace on breakwater, seaweed & staves, little abandoned rafts sailing over the blue back of death, so strange this may sky, on the beach without the pain of centuries troppo mare & all at once, so much history, so much loss, a heart sunk in seawater on the abra, a message asleep, forgotten, in the bay of the Genoese. yet not the desert, yet where we find your eyes, your distant hands & on sensing your naval between the sleepless beacons of the agaves, from their high silence, not only the dunes, without their mirages, the traces of your body mirages, al cabo remains of a mysterious memory’s remains. where, tell me, where, if everything sleeps, if i vanish into the sand like an alphabet of water & the thirst stays until the clouds form. the hands of the palm trees seeking the hug of the broken skyline are useless memory approaches.

ii. it was before the cloud came that my eyes caught her arriving at dawn amid a flock of seagulls with the first blow of the west wind. winds, yes, like lights, which entered my home stripping the patios, blowing the rust from the bolts, high winds, tail winds dismantling the sudden signs of your light. they proclaimed you in floods of blue, mauve, crimson, as each day went burning your flame on the hills your light in the ravines, your early, boreal laughter queen to the mother of pearl, princess who left her name in uleila & a legend in gold : “it is always too late”. it was the right time for you to come you were dark and tall, and from your mouth the red flags of the fruit were waving.

iii. when stone rolls into the estuary cut your pain: it is the sound bringing the long nights of water from the floodgates of Benínar. the stone sings underwater on the dark cliffs somehow dreaming of becoming a tide without bearings. there are statues, friezes, monoliths, houses & olive trees under the black water, slabs and sea shanties sung by the streams, lilies, eyes, submerged bells. and there is no escape. not even the coma of the repentant, of fools. not even the wings, or the horse with spit on its muzzle. if love had always been placed side by side with death living inevitably. it was there from our beginning confused by the boredom of death. from the enigma of stone i come breathing the air of the cave, sailing the cold current of mystery. the stones dream of the bridge above and it is night & i want to be with you. i want to be with you when it arrives the bloodthirsty onslaught burying the last windows of pain. along the avenue of buried flesh towards a light deeper than stone deeper than bones and roots i go drifting, new and alone.

iv. so other waters appear blue, further away, returning to the cape, and the cliffs sunrise doves and coos, new mermaids, who from the hopeful cliff inhabit the air. the men prepare, on the bridge. their backs to the isleta the horizon promises light mullet & snapper. but it is late on the shore. the reefs surround the final wishes and it is late in the bay for the one who lies and dreams, staying on the side of the stone. here, with so much sea, so much sky, so many backs borne back, the eyes and the hands have departed the only smell is of an empty town at dawn, ruins in the sand, uninhabited light. the cloud stays. the words unnecessary now that the pain lifts, luff to starboard and passes. it is late and the handkerchiefs are flowering on your back so love, old love poor love so old, so clumsy, so tired, stares out into the sea, closes the shutters lays down and rests.

_____________________

«Troppo mare»

I

Extraño tanto mar, raro este cielo desgranado de luz sobre la Isleta, ajeno a este naufragio que se crece en la orilla en cabos, jarcias, mástiles, jirones de velámenes, armaduras y redes que simulan encaje en la escollera, duelas con algas, pequeñas almadías despobladas sobre la espalda azul del exterminio, raro este cielo para ser de mayo, ajeno a este dolor de siglos en la playa. Tanto mar y de golpe, tanta historia y vencida, ya corazón mojado sobre el abra, ya mensaje dormido, preterido, en la Bahía de los Genoveses.

Y no sólo el desierto sino dónde tus ojos, sino tus manos lejos y cuándo tu cintura presentida por entre los hachones vigías de las pitas, desde las atalayas del silencio, no sólo ya las dunas sin espejismos al cabo, restos de la memoria del misterio. A dónde, dime, a dónde, si todo está dormido, si he quedado en la arena como lengua de agua y la sed permanece mientras llega La Nube. Inútiles las manos que desde las palmeras pretenden el abrazo de un horizonte roto a donde tu recuerdo se avecina.

II

Fue antes de La Nube que mis ojos la vieron llegar de madrugada en medio de un tropel de gaviotas con el primer embate de un poniente marino.

Vientos, sí, como luces, que por mi casa entraron desnudando los patios, aventando el orín de los cerrojos, vientos largos, de cola, repentinas señales de tu luz desmantelando.

Se anunciaron los signos, los tuyos, en bandadas azules, malvas, granas, según fuera prendiendo tu llama por los cerros, tu luz en las quebradas, madrugadora y boreal tu risa, reina del nácar, princesa que en Uleila dejó su nombre escrito y una leyenda de oro: «Siempre es tarde».

Era la hora justa del abordaje tuyo y eras alta y morena y por tu boca ondeaban las rojas banderas de la fruta.

III

Cuando ruede la piedra en el estero abrevia tu dolor: es el sonido que desde las compuertas en Benínar traerá la noche larga con el agua. Porque la piedra canta submarina y en cantiles oscuros sueña a veces un devenir de tromba sin estribos. Serán estatuas, frisos, cariátides, casas y olivos bajo el agua negra, lajas y cantos por la torrentera, ojos, lirios, campanas sumergidas. Y no la huida, ni siquiera el trance de los arrepentidos, de los necios, ni siquiera las alas o el caballo con el belfo de espuma. Sí el amor a lo que siempre estuvo con la muerte codo a codo viviendo inevitable. Estuvo allí desde el principio nuestro con la muerte diaria confundido. Desde el enigma de la piedra vengo a compartir el aire de la gruta, a navegar en la corriente fría del misterio. Que ya la piedra suena por el puente de arriba y es la noche y quiero estar contigo cuando llegue viscosa en la embestida, sepultando los últimos espejos del dolor.

Por el camino de la piel abajo hacia una luz más honda que la piedra, más profunda que huesos y raíces, es que voy derivando nuevo y solo.

y IV

Es así que otras aguas se presienten azules, más allá, volviendo El Cabo, y en los acantilados amanecen palomas y zureos, sirenas nuevas, que desde el farallón de la esperanza pueblan el aire.

Sobre el puente los hombres aparejan. De espaldas a la Isleta promete el horizonte con la luz lisas y pargos.

Pero es tarde en la orilla. Los escollos amurallan los últimos deseos y es tarde en la Bahía para el que yace y sueña, para el que se quedó del lado de la piedra.

Aquí, de tanto mar, de tanto cielo, tanta espalda alejándose, se han extraviado los ojos y las manos y sólo huele a pueblo vacío con el alba, a ruinas de arena, a luz deshabitada.

La Nube permanece. Las palabras sobran ahora que el dolor levita, orza a estribor y pasa. Es tarde y en tu espalda florecen los pañuelos.

Es así que el amor, el viejo amor, el pobre amor tan viejo, tan torpe, tan cansado, mira hacia el mar, entorna los postigos y se tiende y reposa.

___________________

Thank you for reading - this is my original translation of Javier Egea - please do not reprint without permission. The poem comes from "Poesía completa. vol. 1 Editorial: Bartleby."

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

Killing beauty with time: some thoughts on my new pamphlet

What is it?

Fuck Poetry is my seventh pamphlet. It’s my second with Red Ceiling Press – a press I admire - I've enjoyed recent Red Ceiling pamphlets by Ian Seed, Andrew Taylor, Tim Youngs, JP Seabright and Lydia Unsworth. It is anti-poetry. I wrote it with the intention of collaborating with the wonderful New Zealand based poet Hera Lindsay Bird. When I spoke to Hera it turned out she had a new born & had better things to do with her time than help me Fuck Poetry, so I flew solo.

Why read it?

I would not recommend reading it.

Why do the poets on the back Blossom Hibbert and Mark Waldron recommend reading it?

I do not know. Read their blurbs.

How did you write it?

The opening Armitage-dedicated poem [‘for the theatre critic in crisis’] was written as an angry repost to a small press publisher who is too inconsequential in the history of literature me to name. The majority of the poems were composed while drunk at University of Nottingham. I had a vague idea I was supposed to be translating poems from Spanish [I am studying for a PhD in literary translation] but my supervisors have disappeared off the face of the earth, probably fired by the university , possibly in kitesurfing in antibes with a guitar and a banjo, who knows! Instead of translating Spanish poetry I spent my valuable time on these poems, typing furiously, at my desk, rosé in one hand, cigar in the other.

I am interested in the anti-poem, my friend Julian Stannard is good at them. Chelsey Minnis and the above-mentioned Hera LB are amazing. Maria Sledemere has written brilliant anti-poetry, she can do anything. I also got a lot of guidance from dead French poets. The famous Artaud quote, which I will loosely abracadabra into English for you: “All writing is shit. People who go beyond vagueness to try to clarify what’s going on in their minds are pigs” / « Toute l’écriture est de la cochonnerie. Les gens qui sortent du vague pour essayer de préciser quoi que ce soit de ce qui se passe dans leur pensée, sont des cochons » was elemental for me. It set off a spark. A spark is, often, all it takes.

Sean Bonney, who I attempt to canonize in my video game poem ['game over’] has been long been a touchstone for me, especially since he threw himself off a balcony in Berlin. I admire the nihilism – I only wish his ex girlfriend Síofra McSherry would stop texting me all the time - I have had to block her on WhatsApp. Bonney's nihilism is a good counterpoint to the boredom of 21st century living. The Shakespeare quotes come from watching Macbeth with my mum for the 108th time. I’d like to give positive notice to the Nottingham Shakespeare Company, who were, as always, fantastic.

The elegantly titled poem dedicated to Don Paterson [‘oceanic violence as a secret way of communicating with horses’] was written live in a workshop with Don Paterson. He is an interesting person, but I do not rate his poetry. I think it is really bad. I do not understand why he is a famous poet. The poem takes a satirical swoop at my writing process – at his writing process - at everyone in the fucking workshop’s writing process. It is irony. The ironic tone of my poem and breaking the fourth wall is a trick I learnt from my favourite Spanish Poet Manuel Vilas. Gracias a Manuel Vilas!

Who are the women in the book?

Maria Sledmere is a close friend. The tone of the poems for her is platonic [more or less…]. We read together at Broadway cinema in Nottingham in April 2025 around the time I was working on the pamphlet. I should also shout out my protégé Blossom Hibbert – she wrote her first ever blurb on the back cover – and is a huge talent. I hope to read more of her poetry in the future. Rebecca Perry gets namechecked because I have a huge crush on her. Kathryn Maris isn’t mentioned directly in the poems, but she’s been an important influence on my writing style.

The other women poets are too inconsequential in the history of literature for me to mention. They are exes. I slept with them, end of. I'd rather drive a steak through my heart than have to talk to any of them again. For the record I am a feminist and I adore women, but new writing has to break new ground, and we cannot flatter a muse in 2025, we might want to, if it is artistically viable, flatten them.

Why are you so angry at the UK poetry scene?

I am not. It is satire. I have millions of friends in poetry, especially in Nottingham, where I was born. Jake Wide Hall and Ammy Acre love me. If you are of reading age and do not understand satire – may I suggest taking up another hobby.

Who are Amy and Jike?

I have no idea. Figments of your imagination perhaps. I wish them all the best with their biscuit empire.

You seem to poke fun at cancel culture in the pamphlet, why?

I’ve just got to the point where I find it ridiculous. A poet I know got cancelled for having a black square in his book. A black square, in a book. Fuck Poetry.

For the record Dave Coats of Dave Poems is probably one of the stupidest reviewers I have ever come across. I do not know who encouraged him to write but his blog is ridiculous. He is misandrous, obtuse and full of bile at a world he does not understand. I note he has given up writing reviews - thank god - now we can get back to writing poems.

When I see cancel mobs forming online, I always think, why attack a stranger? Why take your anger out on people you do not know? Dave Coates and his friends are the same sort of people who burnt witches at Salem, same energy, same mob mentality, same idiocy. It does not matter if you label it woke, anti-work, whatever. The culture war is is bored privileged people re-living all the fights they never won in the playground.

The psychological damage they inflict on their targets is real. I find it weird and would never participate in something as ugly as an online smear campaign. For the record the public criticisms I’ve made of small presses are not part of cancel culture – I have asked people I know to raise their standards – its not the same energy. I like them all as people, I just do not think they should rip people off. I am sorry but if Outspoken Press got reported to the Royal Society of Literature (which they did) I will tell people they got reported to the Royal Society of Literature. If you have a problem with me telling emerging poets the truth about your business practises: do one.

With regards to my poetry, the message I wanted to give is that cancel culture has got so out of hand I would rather be cancelled than uncancelled – it would allow me to keep my integrity as a writer and keep me away from a group of people I do not like or respect. The scene is crazy; it’s a fucking circus. My integrity as a poet matters more to me than my morals being approved of by a bunch of people I’ve never met.

Why do you act like you are some sort of literary titan?

I was not aware I did. I have kind of lost myself to grief for my father and sister these past few years. Maybe I have an attitude problem – feel free to check in with Matthew Welton [PhD supervisor] on my attitude problem. I do like Matthew Welton though. He can write – unlike other academics at the University of Nottingham

There are probably a lot of people who think I am talentless, and that is fine, as long as this disapproval is expressed constructively and not through abusive emails. It's fine, it’s normal to criticize other people.

What is next for you?

My second collection [‘white flowers’] should arrive in 2066 or possibly one or two years earlier.

I recently relocated to Spain & intend to spend the next decade on the beach in Almeria, drinking rosé and admiring the poetry of Luna Miguel. I am not going to tell you anymore about my life. I am bored. I have had enough. Before I go, I will mention my sister May who the pamphlet is dedicated to, she died of a drug overdose in Loughborough while was working on the pamphlet. I miss her a lot. Rest in peace May Baylis.

I will finish this article with a quote form one of my late father’s favourite films [‘some like it hot’]:

"I'm a man!"

"Well, nobody's perfect!"

[a shorter version of this article appeared in the Red Ceiling Press newsletter]

___________________________

Fuck poetry is out now from the Red Ceiling Press

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

A thousand little Persian horses were sleeping

Federico García Lorca

No one knew the perfume of the secret magnolia of your stomach No one knew you tortured a lovely hummingbird between your teeth.

A thousand little Persian horses were sleeping in the moonlit plaza of your face, while I hugged your waist, four nights, enemy of snow.

Entre gypsum & jasmine, tu mirada was a pale branch of seeds. I searched my chest to give you the letters in ivory which say always

always, always: garden of my agony, your body forever fugative, the blood from your veins in my mouth, your mouth already black for my death.

______

"Lorca wrote the poems [from Diván del Tamarit] in the last years of his life and they were published after his untimely death. The word 'diván' is taken from the Arabic meaning a collection of poems. Tamarit is the name of the country estate, outside Granada in Andalusia, where Lorca wrote most of the poems."

________

Gacela del Amor Imprevisto

Nadie comprendía el perfume de la oscura magnolia de tu vientre. Nadie sabía que martirizabas un colibrí de amor entre los dientes.

Mil caballitos persas se dormían en la plaza con luna de tu frente, mientras que yo enlazaba cuatro noches tu cintura, enemiga de la nieve.

Entre yeso y jazmines, tu mirada era un pálido ramo de simientes. Yo busqué, para darte, por mi pecho las letras de marfil que dicen siempre,

siempre, siempre: jardín de mi agonía, tu cuerpo fugitivo para siempre, la sangre de tus venas en mi boca, tu boca ya sin luz para mi muerte.

__________________

The quote above is from Paul Archer whose translation helped me with my own. Mil Gracias! xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

a clear moon casting light over peaches from georgia

Would you like to throw a stone at me? Here, take all that’s left of my peach. D.H. Lawrence, The Peach

A couple of weeks ago I drove my Rolls Royce into Justin Bieber’s swimming pool. Back then was the heyday of the roaring 2020s. Foghorns, feather-heads & lithe urchins screaming around baggy corners of Hollywood, neon guitars, champagne, electric girls singing “baby, baby, baby oh”. I used to laugh at the strange strangers who spangled Bieber's colourful parties with the funny noises they made under the shadow of peach trees. This was before I realized they were just as real as you or I. I mean fake. I mean real. On arrival I smashed my car into the green lights of the harbour & my bright yellow rolly turned into the emeralds in my hand. In the crush of luxury metal, a writing style fell into my wrist, it is the magic with what I am writing, thank you. 

A man in a multicoloured coat made of mother of pearl and marbles with a magic stick met me at the perimeter of Justin Bieber’s fence and removed my shoes from my navy-blue socks. I gazed over the walls at a group of young and beautiful strangers, all laughing and smiling and laughing and smiling and smoking long, graceful cigarettes. They looked splendid in the crepuscular charm of the evening. I smiled at them, they ignored me.

I woke up and I was among a flock of Canadian geese on Beverley Road. It was five in the morning. Justin Bieber stumbled out of the French windows onto the neatly trimmed summer lawn with a girl who looked like whoever the It girl of Hollywood was. Zendaya. Bella Hadid. Zendaya. No clue. The names in tinsel town are perfectly interchangeable, sometimes they are replaced by people, but more often the names stay, like people. Carla Delevingne. Does Carla mean anything in Greek? I am not sure whether Carla Delevingne is a good thing or a bad thing. No clue. In Hollywood, my lilac eyes are for sale, and are free for anyone to drown in, but my peach coloured heart remains private.

*

The swimming pool was very shallow. I went to Justin Bieber’s house last Friday night for another interminable party. I chatted for hours with a man subjected to a torrent of abuse on social media. After quitting the internet, he found a lucrative job as the owner of an opal mine, the man, named Todd Shift, had been excommunicated from a group of people he didn’t belong with in the first place. Writers. He excommunicated himself from a group of writers because he couldn’t write. But there was a rumour that he sent sexual messages to miners, opal miners, minors, I wasn’t sure what the rumours were. Swerve. I was not entirely sure which. I didn’t ask him about the rumours. It felt embarrassing. 

Shift was calm when we spoke. However, the conversation hit a minor detour when I brought up Eyesore press, later renamed the Black Shift Group. I remember as young writers me and my old friend Adam Can’t tormented him on his Myspace page. After an hour of conversation, the reality of my relation to him became transparent. Shift rumbled me. Oh my god are you Charlie Baylis are you he mouthed in horror. That dickhead Charlie Baylis who sented (sic) me all those annoying Pikachu themed e-cards in the winter of 2006? I blushed. The conversation splattered over the patio like a poached egg over sunburnt avocado on toast. Shift’s eyes glazed over and his face purpled, recalling a beetroot ripening in a field on the outskirts of Warsaw. I spotted an opening in the heady foam of the cloud pool & dived in. I surfaced only a foot away from Bella Hadid’s belly. It was round and pierced with a diamond. She handed me a large joint and said a kind sounding hello handsome. I puffed it. Marijuana is such a delicate high. Shift was left stranded holding his caviar and champagne in sheer disbelief.

*

Shift was my favourite guest of the evening; later he was even kind enough to write and perform a song for Justin Bieber. His song was about being pissed on by a boyband. To this day Shift’s song remains insoutenable gibberish. It’s bad harmony and lyrics rock a wave of nausea into my peach coloured heart. I spent the rest of the party avoiding flirtatious glances from Adam Can’t wife, Emma Can’t. Emma’s husband Adam was not even there. I think he’d given up on fame by this point. Fair. The other guests talked about themselves and laughed in an unhealthy way. That was the norm. I did the same. I mean, it was Hollywood, what was  I supposed to do? I desperately wanted to fit in. Why would I go to celebrity parties if I didn’t want to be one of them? Why would I do this to myself?

Money, I suppose. The cruel reality was if I could just get a co-write on one or two songs on Justin’s new album that would be my rent paid in Los Angeles for the rest of the year. Studying poetry at UCLA isn't cheap. I just needed an in. Desperately. I was so desperate for a word with Justin. The more intense the feeling got the sicker I started to feel. I spoke to a pretty girl, and she told me I was sick. She told me I looked really bad – like I had just been vomited on by a flower. If you do not know how bad you are as a person, just approach the nearest mirror and start hollering at it, then throw up your wine and strawberry tart on it. That should give you a fair idea of you at your worst.

Around four am I got my big chance. Bella Hadid generously offered to introduce me to the man himself. The man from the videos. heartthrob of the lust generation. Justin took me by the hand and led me round the forty-four walls of his Hollywood mansion. Swerve. His elegant, ivory kitchen gleamed with the lustre of Brazilian gold mixed with the regal ivory of woolly mammoth bones. I was happy to see that Justin kept a clean home, the walls were honey colour and smelt of white tea and jasmine. He had a model wife ^^ and three children: Justin, Justin and Justin. He offered me his million-dollar wristwatch. I said no – though he was a kind man, I wanted to earn my place at the table. Hollywood is very real, I told kept telling myself in these little pep talks in my head, you’ve got this Charlie Baylis, you’ve got this Charlie Baylis, don’t fuck this one up.

*

Fuck. I fucked it up. When I was alone with Justin, I started telling him how much I hated his friends. He told me the problem was with me and not them. Later he wrote the line down and it became a song. However, dear reader, I can assure you his friends were terrible people. All my time, for the last couple of months, spent in parties waiting for our generation’s Grace Kelly to arrive in a bleach blonde pumpkin chariot. What a waste of time! All for what? I never even managed to get anything on Justin’s 18th studio album tentatively entitled the elastoplast weekend sticker book and drumroll set, because when we were synching the last strawberry hook of a golden number called ‘tidbits’, right there in the studio with the main man himself. Swerve. The owner, a man in a multicoloured coat made of mother of pearl and marbles with a magic stick, smashed open the studio door and shouted at us to stop. He ripped the chords out from my neon guitar. He pulled a novelty sized eraser from his garish emerald backpack and deleted everything we’d written. He said it was all karmic revenge for the damage inflicted on his friend Todd Shift in the early noughties. Todd Shift was a great man he said, and I had no right to bully him off the internet. I stared down at Justin Bieber’s peach coloured tracksuit and felt guilty, hey Justin, I wistfully leaned into my fast friend, did you get that peach tracksuit out in Georgia?

*

At the end of the party I collapsed in the swimming pool, drained and starring at the stars. Bella Hadid was lying around drunk in a rose bush with a man I'd met a few times. A children's entertainer and agitator for peace in Hollywood between the Turkish-Cypriot kebab industry and the Israelite gyro industry, lil ant. He was famous in Hollywood for having a really small penis. Zendaya had her arms around a purple toad that had turned into a prince, or was it that it was the other way around, I recognised the toad limitedly, he was the editor of Wayne's world, lil chump. Lil ant and lil chump, making it with the ladies. I could not care less. Who were all these people? To tell the absolute truth I had had enough. I got into songwriting for the money, not to hang around with a bunch of morons I had no time or respect for. I never made it in the neighbourhood. Go me.

A few years later ‘tidbits’ finally came out on New Wave records and reached number 18 in the Belgian charts. I am dining out on the royalties as I post these news articles on my blog. Ok I am dining out in McDonalds, but that is still dining out. Alright I am dining out on a one-euro hamburger, but that is still dining out. I wrote a top twenty hit in Belgium and I have every single right in the world to enjoy my life.

__________________________________

Fan fiction in celebration of Justin Bieber's new album which is called Swag. Have a listen. My favourite song is called "Daises". Big love Charlie xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

on this night in this world

alejandra pizarnik

on this night in this world

in the words of a dream, from a dead woman’s childhood

whatever words you want to say are never the words you say

your mother tongue castrates

the tongue is an organ of knowledge

of every poem’s failure

castrated by its own language

the organ of re-creation

of re-cognition

but not of resurrection

of something in the manner of negation

of my horizon of Maldoror with his dog

and nothing is a promise

between the sayable

which is the equivalent of lying

(everything which could be said is a lie)

the rest is silence

except silence does not exist

no

the words

do not make love

they make a void

if i say water, do i drink?

if i say bread, do i eat?        

on this night in this word

the extraordinary silence of this night

what happens to the soul is that it is not seen

what happens with the mind is that it is not seen

what happens to the spirit is that it is not seen

where did this conspiracy of invisibility appear?

not a single word is visible

shadows

vicious spaces where we hide

the stone of madness

black corridors

i have walked them all

o stay a little longer with us!

my person is wounded

my first-person singular

i write like someone with a knife raised in darkness

i write like i am saying

absolute sincerity may continue to be

the impossible

o stay a little longer with us!

words deteriorate

leaving the palace of language

the mind between the legs

what have you done with the gift of sex?

o my deaths

i ate them they choked me

i cannot take it any more from i cannot take it any more

sullied words

everything slides

into black liquefaction    

and the dog of Maldoror

on this night in this world

where everything is possible

except

the poem

i speak

knowing that this is not what it is about

knowing that this is always not what it is about

o help me write the most disposable poem

        one which does not even serve

           uselessness

help me to write words

on this night in this world

for Luna Miguel

__________________________________

en esta noche en este mundo las palabras del sueño de la infancia de la muerte nunca es eso lo que uno quiere decir la lengua natal castra la lengua es un órgano de conocimiento del fracaso de todo poema castrado por su propia lengua que es el órgano de la re-creación del re-conocimiento pero no el de la resurrección de algo a modo de negación de mi horizonte de maldoror con su perro y nada es promesa entre lo decible que equivale a mentir (todo lo que se puede decir es mentira) el resto es silencio sólo que el silencio no existe

no las palabras no hacen el amor hacen la ausencia si digo agua ¿beberé? si digo pan ¿comeré?

en esta noche en este mundo extraordinario silencio el de esta noche lo que pasa con el alma es que no se ve lo que pasa con la mente es que no se ve lo que pasa con el espíritu es que no se ve ¿de dónde viene esta conspiración de invisibilidades? ninguna palabra es visible

sombras recintos viscosos donde se oculta la piedra de la locura corredores negros los he recorrido todos ¡oh quédate un poco más entre nosotros!

mi persona está herida mi primera persona del singular

escribo como quien con un cuchillo alzado en la oscuridad escribo como estoy diciendo la sinceridad absoluta continuaría siendo lo imposible ¡oh quédate un poco más entre nosotros!

los deterioros de las palabras deshabitando el palacio del lenguaje el conocimiento entre las piernas ¿qué hiciste del don del sexo? oh mis muertos me los comí me atraganté no puedo más de no poder más palabras embozadas todo se desliza hacia la negra licuefacción

y el perro de maldoror en esta noche en este mundo donde todo es posible salvo el poema

hablo sabiendo que no se trata de eso siempre no se trata de eso oh ayúdame a escribir el poema más prescindible                el que no sirva ni para                ser inservible ayúdame a escribir palabras en esta noche en este mundo

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

38 things i like

because today is the 9/5/2025 so i make that 38 trips around the sun

Being myself

Coffee (Cappuccino, Americano or Flat White with whole milk)

Victory

Nottingham Forest

Holidays

Walking by the ocean

Snacks (peanuts, cashew nuts, crisps, olives etc )

Bob Dylan going electronic

Greta Thunberg

Le Cygne by Charles Baudelaire

Saturday night and Sunday morning

Anthropocene poetry journal

Urban Outfitters

Marilyn Monroe

Everyone I grew up with - tho we don’t speak any more :(

The Beatles

Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles under the sunset

Zelda & F Scott Fitzgerald

Retiro Park, Madrid in October

Shopping in large supermarkets

Génie by Arthur Rimbaud

Frédéric Chopin's fringe

Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe by Édouard Manet

Ice cream weather

Blossom Hibbert

Paris, au bord de la Seine

Kind people

Coffee dates with Juliette Binoche

Greenpeace

Ted Hughes & Sylvia Plath

Maria Sledmere

Colourful shirts

33

Kendrick Lamar

Midnight in Rome on the Spanish Steps

Aaron Kent

Anceint Greek Philosophy

The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

__________________

Thanks for reading, or not reading, either way is good. Charlie xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

An introduction to the post-epicurean psychedelic school of poetry

Plato: Socrates, my old pal, great to see you in this Athenian dive bar. I have been having a few doubts & frustrations with the direction of contemporary poetry. My doubts are nothing new, I am sure they are shared by others, however, to explain briefly, I feel very little of note has happened in poetry since the publication of The Waste Land in 1922. The rampant commercialisation of advanced capitalism alongside other dark forces, especially the rise of social media, where any idiot with a few publications to their name is automatically a poet, has led to average writers becoming, in their own heads only ‘famous writers.’ This includes those who hold office as Poet Laureate, edit the Poetry Review, and those who win large cash prizes. I want to distance myself from the commercialisation of the art form. I want to make my disapproval loud & clear. I thought the best way to do this would be to establish my principles in a new school of poetry.

Post-epicurean psychedelia exists at an intellectual remove from a culture in decline. It finds its remedy for the ills of our society in the concentration on the image of modernism, along with good things that have come out of writing, in terms of the opening up of the arts to diverse backgrounds & developments in sound, tone and form that I, as the leader of this new school, enjoy. I think we need to go back to modernism with its imagery-heavy and luscious landscapes and couple this with solid foundations of Epicurean philosophy and playfulness. These are the founding precepts of my school. How would you frame your objections to the ‘leading’ poets of our generation? I mean, would you rather read one of their poems or endure a long-winded public debate in the Agora about whether Maria Sledmere knows how to pronounce “philosophia”?

Socrates: So does one have to be a hedonist to enrol in this school? It sounds a tad programmatic. Are you a hedonist? Are you a decadent? Some of those 1890s chaps took things to extremes. I've come to believe that the mature poet writes the poems they have no choice but to write, irrespective of who might happen to be Poet Laureate or the flavour of the month, and those poems will, in one way or another, reflect their life, their character, personality, experience, views on cookery, blah blah etc.

It's an endless, unpredictable, fascinating, bewildering, unsettling, and often really annoying process. If one is lucky, after everything, or somewhere along the line, one will establish what people call "a voice". So, given all of that, at least half of which I might agree with at any one time, I would assume that if one is a true hedonist, a fully signed-up Epicurean, their poems will naturally reflect that philosophy, and they would not need to enroll in a school, or adopt a program. If the poet only adopts the guise of the hedonist you'd end up with dishonest poems. But perhaps dishonest poems can be okay. Poems are only machines made out of words, after all. Discuss.

Plato :I’m not looking for any poets to sign up, enroll, or join my school. I’m not offering my services as an editor for free, I'd rather hear a poem about Luke Kennard deciding whether to go for the last piece of lamb at the symposium than another ‘self-reflection’ on the poet’s breakfast habits. Either you are part of the movement or not. I do not care. On a personal level, it is unlikely your poetry, my dear friend, as much as I admire you, your poetry would never be accepted as post-epicurean – you style is outdated - though I do admire your critical writing. Post-epicurean psychedelia is not pedagogical; it is philosophical. The principles of creative writing schools do not exist – they are essentially a sham, a pyramid schemes from a failed Blairite experiment to open up education to the masses, which allows those willing to demean themselves for money, i.e. academics comfortable lives and plenty of opportunity to waffle and hold forth over meaningless forms.

I like your idea of poems as machines made of words, but your conception of hedonism is misconceived. Epicurus was not “taking things to extremes” – not by modern standards. The hedonism Epicurus believed in was the pursuit of ‘peace of mind’ or ‘a life free from stress’ through letting pleasure dictate his day. “Day is desire and night is sleep” – as Wallace Stevens later wrote.

Poetry, then, must go on pleasure and treat pain in a more nuanced way. There is also too much focus on the identity of the author; the work is more important. Sylvia Plath, though a manic depressive, might still be considered Epicurean in that she bit her future husband on the face – an example of someone not afraid of being alive. Her poetry vibrates with the thrilling chill of life. However, Plath’s disciples, many of whom send me poems to Anthropocene, are not welcome in my school, nor are they welcome in my journal. Anthropocene, for the many citizens of Athens who are unaware, is an online poetry journal I started while studying at the University of East Anglia, after becoming disillusioned with my teachers I stopped going to the workshops and seminars. I started the journal in July 2019 and my fellow Epicureans Aaron Kent and Laia Sales Merino soon joined me in the process - they are still involved today. At UEA I did not appreciate being told how to write. Fast forward six years of editing a successful poetry journal - I can no longer read the ‘sob story.’ I am tired of hearing the same boring ‘reflection on selfhood’ . I’d rather hear from poets who enjoy life, or at least, make an attempt to enjoy life. Post-epicurean psychedelia is completely free and exists a million miles from the identity of the author. It has nothing to do with academia or the vain and vacuous notions of a million ‘social media poetry influencers.’ However, you can join no matter your background – we are open-minded – it is simply about outlook, and fatally, skill.

Some poets I’d recommend reading who share our principles: Jayant Kashap - one of the great post epicureans. Maria Sledmere - one of the leaders of this generation's avant garde - Plus many other fantastic poets: Shannon Clinton-Copeland, Isabelle Baafi, Hera Lindsay Bird, Matthew Haigh, Toby Martinez de las Rivas, Jen Calleja, Antosh Wojcik, Joe Wright, Anthony Capildeo, Golnoosh Nour, Luke Kennard , Lewis Buxton and Sarah Fletcher. If you write in an adventurous, imagery-heavy style, with little to zero focus on your identity, there is a place for you in Post-epicurean psychedelia, no matter the colour of your skin or sexual persuasion, or if, in my case, you are a bit of a dickhead. On a slide note, my dear Socrates, are you sure those sandals are “appropriate for public discourse” ?

Socrates: You missed, somewhat, the joke. John Ashbery tells of the lady who one day asked how she could enroll in the New York School [Editor’s note – does anyone apart from me and Socrates know this joke?]. Also, I don’t think I have "misconceived" hedonism – I merely pointed out that some of the so-called decadents of the 1890s took pleasure to often extreme lengths.

But, to move on. I am not at all averse to having fun in poetry. If you had read much of my work, you would probably already know that, although what is fun for one person might be sheer tedium for another. It's that old New York School influence, and the time I spent with some of those poets in person – Kenneth Koch, Paul Violi, and Charles North, for example – always involved a lot of laughter, and sometimes more laughter than poetry. But I digress a little, and want to ask a question.

Why do you use the word "psychedelia" in your description of what you're up to? Are you on drugs?

Plato: I’ve read a lot of your poetry and I don’t think you count among the great Athenians, plus your toga is falling down to reveal a rather paunchy midriff. What have you been eating? Why are there yellow stains on your socks ? Despite your poor sartorial taste, the reason I like hanging out with is that you, like me, have strong opinions about poetry. The simplest answer to your question over drugs is no, due to family experience I am aware of the harsh realities of drug addiction. I prefer to live cleanly and feel good through a healthy diet [doubly important for me as I am diabetic]. I do like drinking a lot of coffee when I write and I indulge in the odd vape – a habit I picked up from a girl I used to see around Athens, from time to time.

Why psychedelia? It is an attempt to get away from the mundane, since we have identified it is the mundane which is haunting contemporary letters. I also agree with Bob Dylan, who almost everyone likes, so I am assuming you do too, when he said that once in a while the mind needs to get a little twisted, be that on wine, weed, or whatever – those are not really drugs, they are just ways of escaping from our mundane realities. However, despite an interest in fracturing the real, the psychedelic in post-epicurean refers to the heady and intoxicating imagery. I am aware that you hate my poetry as much as I hate yours, but I will use this as an excuse to quote from my second favourite critic, as you are the first, Socrates, below is Andreea Iulia Scridon writing about my poetry in The London Magazine:

With an acute awareness of a quotidian magic “lovers tonguing in a foreign language,” Charlie Baylis walks through an alternate reality of “orange trees with these orange seeds,” “a palace of tender hearts,” takes us “tearing down sunset boulevard/where the window blinds are lit by gorgeous light/the boats in the harbour twinkle with soft French verbs.”

It is within the gorgeous light of soft French verbs and the sunset swinging through the windows of Sunset Boulevard that the school of post-epicurean poetry was born. It is there that it will stay, far removed from the accessible twaddle that ‘the common man’ can relate to. Contemporary poetry’s ‘leading lights’ make the fatal mistake of giving the reader what they want – not giving the reader what they need. Poetry readers deserve to be given a challenge, rather than Christmas card messages. For me, as I stated at the outset of this discussion, we must go back to modernism and reset the dial. We must go back to H.D. and Pound and Marianne Moore and Eliot and forget the confessionals and the luxurious boredom of the last thirty years. The only way forward is the way back – would you agree? Or has there been a better poem written since T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land that I missed?

Socrates: The reason I asked about drugs – a little bit tongue-in-cheek, though you missed that – and the use of the word "psychedelic" is because that word has a meaning as well as fairly specific connotations for someone of my age and with a certain history of social and leisure activities. I wasn’t expecting a run-down of your own particular intakes. It turns out you’re using the word in the vague way people often do to indicate colorful and/or vivid imagery.

Anyway, to move on, and at the risk of sounding like the boring old fart I might be, I would suggest that speaking about giving the people what they need, rather than what they want, has overtones I find a little unsettling. I think history is littered with people who have said something very similar, albeit it had nothing at all to do with poetry.

For myself, I would rather read and try to write the poetry I want to read and write and leave it at that. Frankly, to have a reasonably significant number of people read and enjoy one's work, and to get the thumbs up from poets of stature and that one looks up to, is about as much, or perhaps more, than one can hope for. Simon Armitage is just part of life's wallpaper, and there's a lot of wallpaper. If people enjoy his work, let them. It's not worth losing sleep over.

I would say, though, that when I was about 25 and starting out in “Poetry World,” I wanted a revolution too, and wanted what me and my mates were doing to take the place of whoever the big names were at the time. It's a healthy attitude for young poets to have. You will probably tell me I'm being patronizing, but never mind.

As for The Waste Land, I think it's a tremendous poem, as well as being of obvious historical importance in terms of its effect on the course of literary history. It's quite a feat to be both those things. But there are other great poems that have been written since, though to compare them as "better" or "worse" is a bit apples and oranges. They're great poems of a different order and have not had the same seismic effect that Eliot's poem did – which is not very surprising. I'm thinking of particular poems by, for example, Bishop, Stevens, Williams, Ashbery, O'Hara to name a few (predictable) suspects. And yes, they're all American, but I have my leanings, .

I'm afraid I have little to say about the future of poetry. It will go on, in all its varied forms. I predict that you will have a book out from an independent publisher I have never heard of and it will garner praise from some quarters.

Plato: Aha! You’re talking about my second collection - i am working in it now - it is going to be called ‘white flowers’. The writing is going well - though it is hard. However, post-epicurean school is not about my poetry. The school is an attempt to push the art form forward. I don’t have a problem with anyone who holds a pen and uses the pen to write poems. Unlike you, I acutally love Simon Armitage. I love Carol Ann Duffy. I think Simon Armitage’s status in the “Poetry World” reflects relatively fairly on the quality of his writing; whereas you’ve hardly pulled up any trees in a 356-year writing career. Anyway, moving on from trading barbs...and throwing a brick instead: Why are certain poets dumbing poetry down to the extent it tastes like hamburgers which are just hamburger flavour hamburgers? I encourage young poets (and myself!) to get off the internet. Put down Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, or whatever David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is called these days and get down to a library and read for an hour. Study the craft. Poetry is worthy of your time. The school will only admit poets who are readers, and good reading is always followed by good poems.

A young person paying to attend a creative writing school needs to be cautious; the academics who are teaching you are part of a system designed to exploit. Post-epicurean poetry empowers its followers to throw their teacher’s work in the bin, tear it apart, and spit on it. We must get back to the idea of the artistic sublime. We must get back to writing for pleasure, a true concept of pleasure which takes the writer down to their darkest ebb of the conscience, where they experience every dark emotion possible before they resurface in joy. We must treat the internet with caution – it does strange things to our minds. Let’s have a revolution where we create a new school of thought, where the only quality that matters to the poem is its artistic value. The rest is noise.

Finally – my dear Socrates, I would like to express how grateful I am for you taking the time to talk to me. Allow me to treat you to the next round. Come along old fellow, we’ve bored the public of Athens for long enough with our ideas.

[Plato pushes through the queue and orders a couple of whiskies – Simon Armitage walks into the bar … Socrates runs a mile]

__________________

Thank you Martin Stannard for participing in this public discourse - or symposium - I am greatful he did not beat me to a pulp when I told him I was the editor, so the final edit would be mine. Deal with it Socrates ;)

My favourite book of his is Postcards to Ma - buy a copy and support the poet! Thanks for reading, Charlie xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

厌倦了那些缪斯女神 / t i r e d o f t h e f e m a l e m u s e

厌倦了那些缪斯女神

厌倦了我诗歌中的那些缪斯女神

让我们假装我正沿着奚珍妮漫步 心跳 任由思绪闪烁到什么地方去 草莓找到了我

或者在田野里 或者在明尼苏达的豌豆们中间

或者在卡蒂萨克号的船舱里 我正倒立着用手指吃番茄汤

盐矿和盐矿博物馆，紧挨着

盐矿 等等！也许是盐矿紧挨着盐矿博物馆！

奚珍妮延伸到了董珍妮 街！

珍妮们不是什么女孩，而是街道的名字！伊丽莎白街是拉脱维亚最美丽的街道

让我们假装我正沿着缪斯女神往南走 哦不！我是说

沿着一条街往南走 想象一下：

我那些没有提到缪斯女神们的诗歌

在你想象的时候 我会去就业中心看看

给我的基因安上一个透明的补丁

_____________

t i r e d o f t h e f e m a l e m u s e

tired of the female muse in my poetry

let's pretend i'm walking down jenny west    heartbeat

twinkling about something else    strawberries find me

in fields     in minnesotan peas    upside down in the cabins

of the cutty sark      eating tomato soup with my fingers

the salt mine and the salt mine museum attached to the

salt mine    wait! it's the other way round!

jenny west opens out onto jenny east    streets!

not the girls! elizabeth iela is prettiest street in latvia

let's pretend i'm heading south down the female muse    oops! i mean         

heading south down a street    imagine:

my poetry absent of a female muse

while you do that i will take a walk to the job centre

sew a see-through patch to my genes

__________________

Translated into Mandarin by Qizhu Zhao

Happy Chinese New Year! xx

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

first and last time in aux pres

___________________

_______

The poem is from Poesía masculina (La Bella Varsovia 2021). Support the poet & buy a copy.

My translation was commended in the 2024 Stephen Spender prize. Thank you to the judges Jennifer Wong & Taher Adeland.

Thank you also to Luna Miguel for permission to publish my translation, & for the deep well of inspiration that her interplay of genders brings to poetry.

[theimportanceofbeingaloof]

my top ten poetry collections of 2024

Samia Halaby - Fold 2 1988

2024 was a great year for poetry, so much to choose from...below are my favourites, in no particular order...

Jemima Foxtrot - Treasure

Rachael Allen - God Complex

Aaron Kent & Stuart McPherson - All Empty Vessels

Danez Smith - Bluff

Síofra McSherry - Midnight Masses

Maria Sledmere - Midsummer Song

Ella Frears - Goodlord

Andrew Taylor - European Hymns

Diana Cant - I Make You Bird

Imtaz Dhaker - Shadow Reader

_____________

Buy the books, support the poets!

Thanks for reading, see you in '25 Charlie xx