Rob A. Mackenzie

Biographical note:  Rob A. Mackenzie was born in Glasgow. He studied law and then abandoned the possibility of significant personal wealth by switching to theology. He spent a year in Seoul, eight years in Lanarkshire, five years in Turin, and now lives in Edinburgh. His sold-out pamphlet, The Clown of Natural Sorrow, was published by HappenStance Press in 2005, followed by a full collection, The Opposite of Cabbage (Salt, 2009). He blogs at Surroundings (http://robmack.blogspot.com) and is reviews editor for Magma Poetry magazine.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844719112
ISBN:  9781844719112
Author:  Rob A. Mackenzie
Title:  Fleck and the Bank
Series:  Salt Modern Voices
Product class:  BF
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  DCF
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Mar-12
Extent:  56pp
Height:  198 mm
Width:  129 mm
Thickness:  4 mm
Weight:  84 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 6.5
Price:  USD 9.95
Rights:  World

Short description/annotation:  This pamphlet may initially look as if it’s going to be a reflection on friendship, but its real themes are disintegration, collapse and disappearance, all within the backdrop of the global financial crisis. Fleck works for a bank but he’s not quite of this world. From the pink tricycles in his mind to the very real wolves stacking shelves with lightweight ‘inspirational’ literature, Fleck presents a mirror to the world as it is and to what it might become.

Main description:  Fleck works for a bank but is uninterested in wealth. He mixes whisky with theology, politics with pizza, original lines with stolen ones. This pamphlet charts a litany of friendship, disintegration, collapse and eventual disappearance via friends, virtual friends and obscure notes. Money makes a cameo appearance as a ghost, politicians leap into cauldrons of boiling fat, God drifts along the high street by mobile phone, and the Patron Saint of Plainsong Maledictions turns up with a little advice in song, which readers are welcome to sing-along to if they wish. In a world of financial insecurity and rapid change, the fractious twins of Gain and Loss battle it out until virtually indistinguishable.

Table of contents:
Foreword
Fleck’s Cloud
Customer Services Call Centre
Radio Alarm
Hangover
The Bank
Carnival
Fleck on Politics
The Packs
Fleck’s Face
The Roses and the Rising
The Moral Hotel
Online
Fleck Explains the Financial Crisis
Please Leave a Message After the Tone
New Testament Methodology
Route Map to God
Bank Holiday
Fleck’s Embers
Now and in the Hour of Our Death
To Occupy an Absence
The Line
Notes and Acknowledgements

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Excerpt from book:  

Fleck's Embers

The charity shop cowers in the shadow of street
illumination. Fleck crawls by, drunk,
drags a shopping bag he can't remember
picking up; within it, his soul's embers
engineer a slow release of smoke, burnt
offerings before the dull window display,
itself a foil for the vigil of neon alphabets
and candle stubs on restaurant tables.

Fleck incinerates the litter bins
and bus shelters, triggers a Mexican wave
of security alarms, by automatic doors
dumps the bag, a gift for his dream lover
who sleepwalks the supermarket aisles.
Their lengthening keeps his nightmares lit.

Previous review quote:  Mackenzie's vigorous urban language, often employed in declarative sentences, vivifies it all… The Opposite of Cabbage impresses with its distinctive style and energetic exploration of ‘the way we live now.'

Carrie Etter
TLS

Previous review quote:  Rob Mackenzie has written a collection of impressive variety and the very best kind of abundance; one which deserves to be on a number of prize shortlists and find for itself a wide audience.

Ben Wilkinson
Magma

Previous review quote:  This really rather splendid collection… is a volume awhirl with expertly juggled ideas and apprehensions. There is not a dud poem in the book. Those with which the collection culminates balance lexical brio, lyrical lift, taut technique, a humanity as deep and nuanced as it is unsentimental and a resistance to paraphrase, that ineffably compelling originality, upon which all really good poetry continues to depend.

Donny O'Rourke
Northwords Now