BOOKSELLER INFORMATION

Publication Date: 15-May-12 | ISBN: 9781844719112 | Trim Size: 198 x 129 mm | Extent: 52pp | Format: Pamphlet

UK Distribution:   | USA Distribution:   | Publishing Status: Active

SYNOPSIS

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.

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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

PRAISE FOR THIS BOOK

“It is rare to find a collection put together so consistently, and perhaps being a pamphlet helps here, the themes do not get tired. But, on the other hand, the themes themselves are unusual, or at least have unusual clarity: to write more about a specific absence than any real moment or presence seems new to me, especially when achieved with such grace. And there will, as I’ve suggested, be many more ways to read this book than mine, it is far bigger than its size suggests. Fleck couldn’t hope for a better offering, wherever he is.” —Harry Giles Sabotage Reviews

PRAISE FOR PREVIOUS BOOKS

“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

“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

“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

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Rob A. Mackenzie was born in Glasgow and lives in Edinburgh. His previous work includes The Opposite of Cabbage (Salt 2009) and two pamphlets: Fleck and the Bank (Salt 2012), which dramatized a bank employee’s life during the financial crisis, and The Clown of Natural Sorrow, (HappenStance Press 2005). Carrie Etter, in the TLS, wrote that his first collection impressed “with its distinctive style and energetic exploration of the way we live now.” He is reviews editor for Magma Poetry magazine.