To Abandon Wizardry

by Matthew Caley

Overview

To Abandon Wizardry, Matthew Caley's seventh collection, speeds through a world where it's harder and harder to tell what's 'real' and what's not. Where our political and cultural reality seems so unbelievable, we search for a plot and find one that comes from the Harry Potter playbook.

Our sky proves CGI, our touchstones AI. Our screens full of wonders, our streets full of decay. We could nod at Deep Fake, QAnon, fake news versus the 'truth' of official news, all manner of waning national myth or ponder the elsewhere we always think of escaping to, that will no doubt prove equally illusory. Set within this almost parallel world, To Abandon Wizardry features a long central poem where someone enjoys an alfresco Americano in Shadwell, London, while in dialogue with a mesh-protected sapling that transmits all the polyglot talk of the city. Either side of this we encounter revenants, disembowelled wizards, talking horses and flying houses.

To Abandon Wizardry forges its aesthetic out of the simulation, hyper-association, and over-stimulation of living in the 21st Century. And it's all true.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780376752
Publisher:	Bloodaxe Books
Publication date:	01/09/2024
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	6.25(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Matthew Caley’s Thirst (Slow Dancer, 1999) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, and followed by The Scene of My Former Triumph (Wrecking Ball Press, 2005), Apparently (Bloodaxe Books, 2010); his lost second collection, Professor Glass (Donut Press, 2011); and his later collections, Rake (Bloodaxe Books, 2016), Trawlerman's Turquoise (Bloodaxe Books, 2019) and To Abandon Wizardry (Bloodaxe Books, 2023). His work has been included in many anthologies, including Roddy Lumsden’s Identity Parade (Bloodaxe Books, 2010) and John Stammers’ Picador Book of Love Poems. He has also co-edited Pop Fiction: The Song in Cinema with Stephen Lannin (Intellect, 2005). He lives in London with artist Pavla Alchin and their two daughters.

Table of Contents

11    prologue
    13    The Vulnerable
    14    The Archipelagos
    16    Bagatelle
    17    The Nit Pickers
    18    Lynx Litter
    19    Luxor
    21    The Blunderbuss
    23    The Leaf
    25    Approaches to a Door
    27    The Strop
    29    The Spill
    30    Wispy Streamers
    31    Pabl  Piccass
    32    Aphid Says
    34    Canton for the Stranded
    35    The Tickle
    36    I Conjured up a Horse
    38    Lamantia Street
    40    The Scarf
    41    from Transmitter
    63    Undescended Testicles
    64    The Obligations
    66    Double-hooped Earrings
    67    The Unbalanced
    68    Unicorn Street
    70    The Confessional
    71    from The Drifting Recidivist Says
    74    Plume Travelling
    76    The Bungalow
    78    Horse in the Sea Mist
    81    This Pure Child
    82    The Height
    83    Star-wheel
    84    Fusillade
    85    Canton for the Wastrel
    86    Depot of the Aero-houses
    88    The Weathervane
    89    Bollo’s Brook
    92    The Lynx
    94    epilogue

Editorial Reviews

"The humour and playfulness... shows off Caley's carefree ability to draw lines across time and space. It also feels profoundly European - a poetry in which borders do not exist, and we are all reflected in this multicultural, pan-historical vision."—Chrissy Williams, Poetry London

‘… the technical resources deployed remain consistently highly coloured and deft in execution. A tanka-derived syllabic structure for stanzas predominates, but a multitude of other forms are used with intelligent grace…I know that it is the verve of Caley’s writing I will be re-reading.’ – Ian McEwen, Magma, on Rake

‘Decidedly indecorous, Caley's vocabulary pricks his readers to keep the action anachronistic and contemporary… the book is a Waste Land of sorts, punctuated with Pound-like fragments…carefully [meticulously] crafted.’ – Edwina Attlee, The Poetry Review, on Rake

'The games Caley plays with simile and metaphor, the word-play, the close observation and the startling timeshifts all create a surface texture that can resemble Surrealism but which usually turns out to be based on a close observation of reality … As Gide said of Henri Michaux, Caley 'excels in making us feel the strangeness of natural things and the naturalness of strange things.'  However much one reads Matthew Caley's poems, I suspect one will always be pulling something new from them.' – Dominic Rivron, Stride Magazine, on To Abandon Wizardry

From the Publisher