five poems
by Jones Irwin
Dream and Lie of Franco, 1936 Haiku
Muerte la inteligensia! Viva la muerte! at Salamanca
Deep song of the duende
- Lorca is assassinated at Granada
Reading Lynne Tillman
After some prose from Weird Fucks
Is quite funny
And also more accurate
When she calls her pussy
A cunt
And describes falling in love
As heart in cunt
Which seems about right
When you think deeply about
it
Or don’t
The Making of Lost Highway
Bill struck me as a guy
who could get himself
into a lot of trouble
which is surely the basis
of any good way of life
and if you take the trouble
and the time to consult the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
you will find especially the passage about
the psychogenic fugue instructive in a manner
that may be relatively surprising
Nude Guardian Readers
Saturday morning coffee
in bed giggling at what
John Crace just wrote
about the Tory Right with
their nipples tilting to the Left
eating avocado on toast
FREE ARTAUD! MAINTENANT!
There is no division in Artaud between life and writing. Paul Auster
How in hell does an anarchist surrealist poet become head psychiatrist but let’s face it he was also an atheist which was no doubt for the best if the death-toll at Ville-Evrard would have killed Artaud also by the end of War the transfer to Rodez was lucky and thanks to this anarchist Ferdière still at first Artaud was in terror of this as yet unknown asylum leaving him open to the magic forces always chasing him moreover he lost his voodoo sword en route from Chezal-Benoît his hair was shorn so short but here he would grow it long again and gain a toothbrush for his eight remaining teeth in the 1940s after a succession of psychiatric hospital stays going on for years each new one often compounding the acute problems he faced Artaud’s case finally came to the attention of the French artistic community a series of defences was prepared to allow him finally to achieve an existential freedom he craved and so thoroughly deserved not that this much sought emancipation would last long our hero would be dead within three years accumulated violence inflicted on his individual body and soul over many years finally take their brutalized toll still many similar victims of medicalized scientific history never get the second chance he got short as it was the paradigmatic defences of this extraordinary artist are a unique reveal of mid twentieth century life amongst these heartfelt passionate missives ones from Breton another from Sartre and Beauvoir a curious and still one more somewhat unexpected deposition from the writer Georges Bataille noted as a difficult transgressive voice of the times although there is no remaining extant version of the latter text defence the following is a reconstruction made from the residual fragments which have survived
let me say first this is a painful testimony I am not here easily people will know I am not a fellow traveller after all I am the solitary thinker par excellence yet having read Artaud’s Letters From Rodez most recently I can only say I was shocked into action truly and horrifically of course I know Antonin longer than most early on we used to meet in Pigalle with some mutual acquaintances it has been well documented that there were frequent stays in psychiatric institutions but of course when he was out Artaud was even more unstable poor devil used to keep saying that the nurses told him that the electroshock would feel like a pinprick no wonder he tried to kill them all at Ville-Evrard with his voodoo sword LIARS but if there was darkness and there was much there was also handsomeness a handsome face and an elegant stature can excuse a great deal in life if that was all there was to say in defence we might still get some distance in trying to free our hero from these dreaded medicine men and electroshock monster machines true beauty goes a long way it being a sign of divine selection is it not and who shall underestimate the discrimination of the immortal gods did you ever see him dance in that long calico dress for the film he was making with the Surrealists honestly the sight would have moved the long dead thus we may well have got him out of Rodez on this account alone but crucially and famously this is indeed not all that we can count up in this extraordinary figure’s favour for isn’t Antonin Artaud also an authentic poet actually let me contradict that immediately as it is TOTALLY FALSE I wrote a book called Hatred of Poetry and I can say that my vitriol extends to those that write it too but let me quote Artaud in his own words written in his own blood always all writing is pigshit where others present their works I claim to do no more than to show my mind so Artaud is no mere poet let me be unusually bold as it is rare that solitary thinkers of my ilk seek to make connects and comparisons but I will make an exception in this case Artaud I propose is a VISIONARY in the best sense only someone who perhaps through his dreaded suffering most of all and so unjust and cruelly inflicted CAN SEE THROUGH TO THE FUTURE if this is a unique life gift then it is no wonder that the punishment followed didn’t he anticipate this plague of resentment when he declared in his famous text that Van Gogh was the patron saint of those suicided by society and the more Artaud refused to conform to the threats and the strictures at the heart of these sick if respectable institutions the harsher and more unforgiving the sadism became look at him now before us as the most tragic skeletal figure hair and teeth falling out emaciated shaking with convulsions still majestic of course the light shining through that extraordinary angular face and those most exquisite if tormented eye sockets he always reminded me of a trapeze artist high on the wire oblivious to fear envied by those who couldn’t ever countenance such adventures of the body and of the spirit so this in brief is my defence of my comrade Antonin Artaud those who know me and my work and all its controversy know that this step is unprecedented for me I rarely even contemplate joining forces with any other human being to put my neck on the line for Artaud nonetheless came urgently as a demand to my singular Nietzschean anti-religious and anti-moral conscience deep in the dead of night and I have not been able to rest since Free Artaud I say I beseech you the human is a genius this concept being vastly overused but not in this particular and increasingly desperate instance FREE ARTAUD! MAINTENANT!
Signed: Monsieur Georges Bataille esq.
Photo of Jones Irwin
BIO: I have published poetry most recently in Poetry London, Red Ogre Review, Espacio Fronterizo (Borderland/ Espace Frontière), The Festival Review, Showbear Family Circus, Passengers Journal, Plainsongs, Cathexsis North West, The Dewdrop, Hare’s Paw, In Parentheses and with Moonstone Arts Press and Tofu Ink Press. 'The Female Rimbaud' was nominated by Tofu Ink Press for a Pushcart Award in Autumn 2021.