GO HORNBOOK SLEW
or as Beyonce sings slay
the evidence is mounting
now we’re among the dead
please use sharing tools
to shine lights deleting
repressive tout backlash
investment taking polite
as the swift fact checks
cancel a translated star
particularly fierce as to
eyes all to become quiet
no squeak was ever freed
but by many a tax-paying
minor detail engraved in
faded colours of keffiyeh
until the award ceremony
fears a blamer flattening
or a thing called furore
unknown to mind managers
as all ease in publicity
may as long as wallflower
is the same on the bombs
and paints of outrageous
fortunes spent on an art
take your pick of bodies
the gallery does deliver
THE EMPIRICIST HEYDAY
early birds go potboiler
as presto to high spirit
prime meme clear to hoop
a manic pixie dream girl
swoon streaming babyface
how zeniths pass to dirt
spent parts didn’t fully
grasp squashing sombrero
pushback its big windows
a killing brief or fatal
oh as you know reassured
the death squad no graph
lame number downing tool
fait accompli gone bland
de rigueur to last fault
literal curtains a peace
as united resolve’s done
to slate blanket queries
epithets taking on lives
a party of the first part
taking the stand in real
estate now clown Tritons
of the minnows hobnobbed
massed for populist wing
gas fat & fiery cherubims
oiling culture war flames
passers the footnote pie
a no care for care homes
a quickie and we’re done
THE VERY REAL
was disinvited from this
growing a-list cancelled
for former views on Gaza
statements against death
due to current situation
silence insisted upon so
listen the care to sound
with those sheltering or
dying or buried heads in
the song of the children
lame stanzas of the left
as if to stay unprovoked
were some summary of the
long catastrophe it here
that escalation of sheer
sustained rage might lie
for all death unsettling
colours held in contempt
well bunny & fluffy code
for surge against stones
into tank-wielding metal
yardsticks with sleepers
as cluster bombs raining
underground for the last
prison cell of the olive
Drew Milne is the Judith E Wilson Professor of Poetics, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. He was previously a lecturer at the Universities of Edinburgh and Sussex, and in 1996 he was Writer in Residence at the Tate Gallery, London. He co-edited Marxist Literary Theory with Terry Eagleton (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), and the anthology Modern Critical Thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003). He has published numerous essays on the politics and poetics of modernism, including work on Hugh MacDiarmid, T.W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Djuna Barnes, Charles Madge, Frank O'Hara and Samuel Beckett. His collected poems, In Darkest Capital, were published by Carcanet in 2017. Recent chapbooks include Cutting Carbons (Cambridge: Institute of Electric Crinolines, 2019); Earthworks (Cambridge: Equipage, 2018) and Lichens in Antarctica (Cambridge: Institute of Electric Crinolines, 2019). His essay in Poetics 'Notes on "Lichen"' was published in Textual Practice (2019).
