Vincent De Souza

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Biographical note:  Vincent De Souza studied English and Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and worked for several years as an advertising copywriter. His interest in motorcycles lead him on a number of road journeys, culminating in a ten country tour starting in Norway and leading into southern Europe. His work has been widely published in the UK poetry press and he has won eight awards, two in high profile poetry competitions.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844715008
ISBN:  9781844715008
Author:  Vincent De Souza
Title:  Resurrecting Knives
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  10-Feb-09
Extent:  80pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  11 mm
Weight:  120 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  In Resurrecting Knives De Souza dissects the conventional anatomy of the poem and fashions a new set of intellectual, technical and visual dynamics. Without resorting to bludgeoning or violence, the author deftly applies a surgical scalpel to make neat cuts around titles or stanzas and into these virtual spaces flow lifeblood of diary entry, film scene descriptions and poetic theory grafted effortlessly into the poem.

Main description:  The knives are out. Poetry declares hand-to-hand guerrilla war on conservative aesthetics, political correctness and boundaries imposed on art. In Resurrecting Knives De Souza dissects the conventional anatomy of the poem and fashions a new set of intellectual, technical and visual dynamics.

Where the American Beat writing experimentalists put work to the sword, randomly cutting up and reforming statements into patchwork poetics – this writing takes on the idea and develops it into a method for strategically cutting into the body of the poem to allow for the insertion of different textures of language and thought. Without resorting to bludgeoning or violence, the author deftly applies a surgical scalpel to make neat cuts around titles or stanzas and into these virtual spaces flow lifeblood of diary entry, film scene descriptions and poetic theory grafted effortlessly into the poem.

A meditation on the nature of human violence dovetails into the climactic hall of mirrors combat scene of Bruce Lee in Enter The Dragon…A contemplation on the design of the Bowie knife cuts dramatically into a motorcycle gang’s knife skill contest in The Loveless…The poem narrator’s regret of hurling fiery verbal abuse suddenly slices into the scene-set with Clint Eastwood directing his gunslinger’s stare before shooting down murderous bandits in A Fistful of Dollars.

This use of what De Souza describes as the “cut-in technique” is evident in poetry throughout this very adventurous second collection. At the same time, these experiments sit alongside an equally potent set of more conventional poems which continue to explore his favoured themes of the loss of childhood innocence, English landscape, the corrupt nature of business culture and the hedonistic intensity of London.

Table of contents:
Hotel Dollar Burns
Accident and Emergency
Jimmy is Well On for Resurrecting Knives
Human Violence Scenes
Gunfire from a Mouth of Words
Last Act for Lynesse
Spoken Bollocks of Therapists One and Two
Examining the Joy Rider’s Dental Record
Jimmy’s Class War: Oxbridge Entrance Exam
Ethics in the Void of Telesales
Painting by Killers
Contract with the Count
Lining a Crypt for Love
Exit the Dragon
Skewed Trinity
Copenhagen Zoo
Coded Breeze
Social Grave
Squawking about Dartmoor
A Metrical Norfolk
Rock Formation Answers
Sea and Her Emotion
Always More Definition
Sunset Tang
Bluffing about Moraine
His Divided Self
Ghosting of Her Love
In Uniform
London Erection
Getting it from the Mirror
Anatomy Show*
English Channels
Goliath and Goliath and Goliath
Shadows of Visionwald
Basement Plane
Grass into Ice
Sugar Mountains
Waker
Cold Dark Matter
Machinehead and the Vehicle Haven
Spectacle: Ad for the Raider
The Introducers
Aftermath of a Mountainous Decision
Throw it Away
Gang of Strippers and Chrome Poles
Poetry Unzipped

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Excerpt from book:  

Last Act for Lynesse

”Poetry is fuelled by the energy fields of
disorder, contrariness and scatter-fire dissent”

LIBERATION SCHEME

It’s time that I am gifted a late revenge,
let slow healing seed in a fortunate dream …
I kneel on hot ground, this harsh compacted dirt,
a wilderness with walls, the far hills are closing in;
shone here from somewhere, wide tremor of light.
Sky separate from radiance — a bold lifeless blue;
this hand comes down to touch the earth by me,
the blemished skin, my eyes probe into distance,
dessert boulders, dust particles line my throat,
in leather armour, soft plates bound to my limbs;
I run compelled, chasing a close imagined prey,
scrub turns into tended grass of a child’s oasis.
A man outlined in the shade of a twisted oak;
my nails refine into slim daggers, I fly at him,
I bring buried pain, a fresh yearning to harm.


ASSAULT ON HELLIDMAN

Hellidman without a face, eyes in a liquid haze,
my razor nails streak slices over his bared neck;
he tries to spit force — but his movement has slowed,
with cuts, blood wets the mound of his stained chest;
fallen to ground, he reaches out for pity and lenience,
points a gnarled finger at a creature under the tree;
to finish him, I knife at soft slabs of his outer flesh.
I pile sections of meat — with a pool of clear water
to mirror the face of a twin Hellidman accomplice,
his mud-caked hands are encircled around my throat.
Quickly, my fingers thin into coils of sharpened wire;
each rip is made with care, I use skill to maim him,
saw at flesh, muscle and nail — he falls in sludge,
head coated in muddy slime, an ornament of bone,
a signal to cease and make a pyre from all I wear.


DRESSING IN THE MORGUE

In these overalls I pass through metal doors;
I feel bliss as they pierce and pump into my dolls.
Here in the safest vault, their bodies all I wish for,
these devils I’ve known are now my props in play;
on steel tables, their stuffing scooped out, replaced
by such tender insides, then stitched back to shape;
I stand by Hellidman, a virgin for my paint spray,
I’ll guild him in a handsome tone, I can even glint
an intelligent vigour in his actual imbalanced eyes.
On a chair by me are suits for my rigid best men;
I zip comical pants, button shirt on a tidied frame,
under my deft handiwork, the signature of a ghoul;
I brush a fringe of straw hair, now subtly in place,
both of you groomed back to life, a final seduction,
my new romance — your remains are set to move me.

Unpublished endorsement:  Romances of oil-spills and leather jackets, videogame epics of excessive blood-spills from razor slashes, are interrupted by cool aphorisms on the function of poetry, poetics. This threatening world where speech is spitting makes room for precise lyricism of church towers and deserted beaches. In between these contrasts is where the poem does its work, talking tough but acting smart, like low-life relishing the high-life.

Robert Sheppard

Unpublished endorsement:  Wild enjambments of the cartoonish and the devastating. Whether witholding judgement in a strip joint, undergoing a Freudian analysis whilst stuck in our own dream or witnessing an autopsy performed and narrated by an android, the reader is in for an electrifying ride in Resurrecting Knives. De Souza presents a world where gang violence between factions of bikers is synonymous with gang violence between factions of poets. Platitudes are rendered as koans, observations are stark and extraordinary. Through Imagistic collage, filmic anti-novels and crazily ambitious dramatis personae, his poetry restores to Dadaism and experiment something that’s so often lacking: its sense of fun, exuberance. And from this lightness of touch emerges a dark, enthralling work.

Luke Kennard

Unpublished endorsement:  Vincent de Souza’s Resurrecting Knives is marvellous. He has the same knack and nous as Peter Reading: his work is swash-buckling in language, maverick yet very funny in strategy, and shot through with painful intelligence

David Morley