New Writers Series: Colin James
February 18, 2020New Writers Series: Nick Hudson
February 28, 2020

Exploding Appendix is a project, which, through a myriad of media seeks to revitalise the avant-garde. With the aid of a plethora of artistic devises we seek to forge a vision for the future, uniting an experimental energy with a utopian yearning that pimples the skin with the potency of a renewed world. Yet, whatever grandiose ambitions may perturb our flesh and ignite a creative delirium, we, nonetheless, undertake the somewhat everyday task of artistic mutual exchange. Through our gatherings, our projects and general correspondences we engage in a process of sharing work, giving encouragement and offering feedback. Puncturing the solitary confines of artistic creation we have drawn sustenance from this process of interaction. Over the preceding months we have organised a number of projects and event which, from Manifesto Nights to Dadaist Cabarets, from ‘share and tell’ evenings to other forms of correspondences and collaborations, have garnered us with an eclectic collection of writings. With a humourless lack of imagination, let’s call this collection of writings our ‘New Writers Series’ — yes, let’s call it that! Throughout February we seek to celebrate the work of a selection of new writers, each, in some way, experimenting with literary form and innovative content. Yet, this collection of literary output holds together, not merely because of its artistic or technical innovation, but because it emerges, in some way or other, from the communal life of Exploding Appendix and the union of artists and researchers connected to it. Let February be the month of the writer, and let each word burst forth with unyielding vigour, drenching each page with the potency of literature eternal.
–
MARC MUIR: 17 MERDRE 145
My hair is shining
Oh dear
Is shining with the last of moonlight in what caterpillar remains when wings have borne the nervous heart to sunshine
Midnight traffic slows like candle wax adhering to a friction dreamt by haziness of line
Another hand inflated
And then stops and hardens
To the joy of solitary thought upholds a key
So whilst I rise and fall in voids of words
Wine dressed in either signal fear of office will
I swear
Draw down its callipygous knickers and
Whilst whistling in the face whatever tide might bring
Of conscious thought a dagger to the mind
Sit still I haven’t finished
Is confusion
Will is overall the shape I grind in feathers
Lets my speech identify the salt in other wounds
All wounds require is peace in silence
Pollinated by the winds on streets enclosed
While chatter motivates them
Where the dust becalms
A shudder grooves into the beaten hallway
Feet remark
A light sometimes enclosed patrols the features
Feeds into lace worms a passion
Or slates my regard
For what mischief can sequence remake
In a system of rooms
Through which ages of verse may have passed
But the question remains
‘To be or ben’t’
MARC MUIR: UNTITLED
Where would I have had to walk in life, to feel the patterns all dissolve, in honesty, the metal fear, its light upon the ground, as cold as life once taught the ones who held it, to be free from form, you push me
You push me
I am tiny as a sparrow, in its eye, a tiger prowls temptation, as again the leaves of nutted masters subterfuge belief, I dwell in clutter for the god of wine, release me
Release me
Abnormal sentiment is chosen over fields of sick mosaic, to calm the dog in chain relief; a wise man folds his only heart over the seal upon a leaden chore, the sunshine stolen from beneath a wheel; what else is he to do, with time?
With time he leaves strange markings
On mountain haze
In raindrops
Packed with trembling sand
A true kiss
Thrown beyond the lightning tip
Restores
Man to woman
There are more dead islands in the average world of spoken speech—eternal skin of voided poles—than there are pearls of imagery
“Oh master, don’t place the ketchup where the razor goes, you be blind”
and to a soldier—who would only fascinate devotees of the material confusion—feet that cross imaginary solutions are relics from a story, roughened by the obedient spiders of open hands, and closed to everyone who is able to think-fuck the real sweetened day
“Oh sister, move to the shadows and wait, under the eyes full of clear wine”
Philosophers take the daughters of time to a public house, with a fool’s prayer to the ancient snake of chance; or someone nails a number to the foot of love, the phantom of erasure, who descends from eyes’ open trunks to watch us seed the hive with four-legged primates called ‘God’
One second worlds age as unconvincingly as automated days of formal duty, part patriotism, part refined necessity; upright custom humiliation, always sure of its receipts, keep lonely means planning cheap private highways, sectioned hearts with free vortices of charm
MARC MUIR: PROLEGOMENON TOWARDS A REASSIGNMENT OF LIFE TO THE VEGETAL PLANE
We are, each one of us, a facet of the great dilemma, and that is life
Our persons, our works, will forever be avant-garde
Because none of us knew the answer, we seek our selves
Because there is no answer, just an onward motion
To the next set of clues
Pick away at your obsessions
Unshell them
Expose them
Taste them
Season them
Taste them again
Turn them to song
What magic do we make?
When we walk against walls?
When we shop?
When we are consumed?
What magic we do make
Rises when we are awoken
To a holding place
That some dare call reality
And this dictatorship of the will of the people is not popular with the turning star across the will of the people delayed is not a star but a dead weight, unusable waste; rocks without features, in the plain light of day, are our fears about being alone
After the sorting
And what has risen will soon fade and fall away when it is not nurtured
It’s not what you’re told that will shape you, it’s what you dream
If we feed from hatred it will be no more than a scapegoat, a projection of those facets of ourselves that have appalled, because we cannot be the perfect form, we’ve tried, and that road has only ever led to fascism
Who we are, who we can become, is already ours to explore, it is ourselves, and if we are alone, we are alone together
We are the fruiting bodies of our dreams
* Marc Muir harvests words from liminal hives.