Biography
I have begun to move into more experimental poetry recently, particularly visual poetry and sound poetry. Examples of my work can be found at: http://santiagosdeadwasp.blogspot.com A recent sample of audio poetry, 'financial advisor', can be heard here: http://www.supload.com/listen?s=26PJYQWLP03H My participatory project 'mutapoem' is a poem in the form of a wiki that can be edited and changed by anyone who visits. 'mutapoem' can be found here: http://mutapoem.wikispaces.com/mutapoem Currently taking MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Bolton University.
Samples
City to city So I’m degenerate and you can’t make out anything I say - you think that that’s an accident? The tonguetied trap and cau- tious crap of trying to speak somebody else, it might be fine for you to try but God it slows me down, and I don’t want it ‘less I choose: Well Desdemona said I’ve been betrayed a friend told lies about how I behaved. He cast doubt on my good reputation I’ve gotta get me some compensation. I said I think that’s the least of your worries you’d better leave town Desdemona and hurry. And I’ve been tripping in the street my eyes are sick for something do you want to pass the time we’ll tell each other lies and burn the house about our ears. Two thousand eight was this the year that Nostrodamus said you better get religion better find a hope better hide under the stairs you better buy the butter that’ll see you through the rapture better quit your job or they’ll tattoo you on the tongue or was it eighteen forty two, who knows? The thing is I don’t wanna be like anybod- y else except I never like to be alone. I’m careless aimless couldn’t get arrested drifting through the city at night. When Romeo had a sad look in his eye somebody somewhere would probably die. He undercooked burgers and poisoned the guests he’d walk into windows and cut up his chest stayed up all night fell asleep at the wheel you just couldn’t tell him it ain’t no big deal. Get this it doesn’t matter what you do if no one pays attention you could walk across the road and preach your own religion in the supermarket aisles. Or you could write your verses up and down the side of bus- es while they’re waiting in the depots at night. Morning tv Don’t want to be the lover mentor muse of teenage poets special friend of single mums or know what happens next. My tv radio NYE internet party so oversubscribed that I can’t get back in I’m singing my skin off dehydrated on the museum steps just put on your chemo hat and go I don’t want to hear you talk. Your silk dress feels nice but it doesn’t really suit me and I don’t want to be that close to you better call a lawyer making noises. Dear Insurer dressed like death I don’t know what that is your fingers bent so far back dystonia or speed it seems like you can’t sign your name. The weather’s calm it smells like smoke there’s nobody around things are broken changed and moved I don’t know where I am. The grate bangs as cars and buses drive across if i wasn’t so damn lazy I’m sure that I’d be dead. 50 Palliative Poems for the Dying and their Families except maybe you need a massage and a pizza. And that’s all the explanation you’re going to get it doesn’t even have a title yet I might call it Apple Pie Matt Dalby’s 115th Dream or something else again. Now shut up and listen there’s a perfect logic here. George Fox was stoned on the streets of Lancaster he’d come home and we’d say ‘George did you get stoned again?’ I got stoned in a Cardiff flat hasn’t been put on a t-shirt yet. I’ve never met George Davies but he might have met George Fox I think they used to work at Burger King. All the bars round here are themed on the Protestant Reformation huge iconic woodcuts of Martin Luther John Calvin and the 1520s Peasant Revolt German proto-socialists. I get nervous when there’s theology on the optics. They click their tongues on Echo Street The Vision Centre down the road I wish they wouldn’t walk so slow. An old man in a Beatles wig and clothes that don’t match anything goes from the station to the new hotel. My ears exploding from the cold but still I couldn’t rest it was then the holy spirit came and I spent three days on the roof giving all my fingers names. Fighting in the garden Tam Lin hollowed out his brain, pees in my stairwell. 1840s, Braggart and drunken. I have slate scar from playing in the river lost a lot of blood when I cycled home. Hated him even then Tam Lin. Hollyoaks cast have been stranded on mussel beds. Couldn’t find their arse with both hands, straggled ashore up the coast. Millom and Haverigg. Feet blown cold. Far away from canalside living. Tam Lin thinks he’s King Ludd, saboteur. too drunk for sex, he smells of chicken fat skin. used to spray tags - takka [angry face] bounces and walks like he’s shit his kecks, scowls, puts hands in his pants. “I’ll stab yer! Y’re not in Rusholme now!” Dressed in black tracksuit. 17 hundreds. Shooter’s Hill. Argued on the stairs with his girlfriend all night, slept by the front door with his cap on. Lager soaking in the carpet. That’s enough, that’s enough. Fighting in the garden. Took all the chairs out back. The Europeans living in the next flat were too polite to complain. Tam Lin’s fucking toadstools growing out of the walls in the stairwell. The boyfriends of footballers came to us as refugees, headscarves - lit from behind, voiced by an actor. They were very nice men but frightened. They sang strange songs we hadn’t heard in fifty years. It was 1963.
All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.
Blog entries by Matt Dalby
12 sound poetry CDRs in 2009 (28/01/2009)
mutapoem (26/05/2008)
Blog link: https://www.writeoutloud.net/blogs/mattdalby
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