Floor Games by Andy Verboom
SKU:
CA$4.00
CA$4.00
per item
PDF
First electronic edition
46 pages
ISBN 978-1-9994442-5-9
Praise for Floor Games:
Bordered on all sides by constraint, Floor Games takes H.G. Wells’s flair for the analogue and material, and then splices, parallel processing each dense iteration so that the language and twisting narratives and phrases emerge multitextual and multivocal, as collaborative multispecies.
Few poets use form to tease out and twist up their subject matter as inventively as Verboom, who here juxtaposes texts that are logically (or at least goofily) connected and yet universes apart. The poems that result are as slick as they are jarringly incongruent; that the whole thing comes out sounding like Verboom speaks to the idiosyncrasy of his voice.
Floor Games is a wonderful, rich piece of work. In the expected manner of procedurally-generated poetry, it skates along in the strange space a little way before language breaks down - and finds many thought-provoking and beautiful things there. Its unlikely seed texts enable it to venture into dark and complex themes (militarism, colonialism, vivisection, AI) and yet it remains the same changeable, startling, childlike guide throughout.
Featuring cover and interior art by Kailee Wakeman
Scroll down for an excerpt
First electronic edition
46 pages
ISBN 978-1-9994442-5-9
Praise for Floor Games:
Bordered on all sides by constraint, Floor Games takes H.G. Wells’s flair for the analogue and material, and then splices, parallel processing each dense iteration so that the language and twisting narratives and phrases emerge multitextual and multivocal, as collaborative multispecies.
- Aaron Tucker, author of Y: Oppenheimer, Horseman of Los Alamos and Irresponsible Mediums
Few poets use form to tease out and twist up their subject matter as inventively as Verboom, who here juxtaposes texts that are logically (or at least goofily) connected and yet universes apart. The poems that result are as slick as they are jarringly incongruent; that the whole thing comes out sounding like Verboom speaks to the idiosyncrasy of his voice.
- Carl Watts, author of Reissue
Floor Games is a wonderful, rich piece of work. In the expected manner of procedurally-generated poetry, it skates along in the strange space a little way before language breaks down - and finds many thought-provoking and beautiful things there. Its unlikely seed texts enable it to venture into dark and complex themes (militarism, colonialism, vivisection, AI) and yet it remains the same changeable, startling, childlike guide throughout.
- Tam Blaxter, poet and linguist
Featuring cover and interior art by Kailee Wakeman
Scroll down for an excerpt
Excerpt: "I. The Toys to Have"
First off, I hear, a box of blue flame.
Shining and distinguished nursery thing
like a meteor unsuspended.
To learn of the origin of tomorrow
step close to the object,
press close to the beasts in the box.
If there’s one side there, one side there,
we’re picking one that never loses:
this infinite coming of stars,
an exaggerated overnova’s
coterie of Grovers and suchlike
that we pass off on an unsuspecting home world
as policemen. Weakly concerned,
we see the ceiling pitch
blue butchers at the Earth
with generous velocity.
It looks mortal on the surf, but Earth
is an enormous astronomically
exercised Mentional History Museum.
Much like a heap of rain.
Their little arrival at this great disk,
swimming on the popular crowd
of memories, moving to solar dance music
—just a slight atmospheric disillusionment.
This is a norchestra: we play
what doesn’t or what does not exist
like somebody else’s dead game.
Trade in the clock, worthless watch
of the heavens, for an afterlife.
One moment, ladies and gentlemen.
Police are trying to rope off the scene,
their plans against us in a mess.
Our next most important possession
after our present natures
sing closed will be the latest bullet.
Metal on its way, we play
the huge cylinder-parent
pointed at disillusionment.
The term is probabilitarism. The war, short
of unusual size, besides the transient
creatures that swarm and multiply,
mouths tannic with red, is the norm.
Several explosions occurringing
in ears are nothing unusual. Soldiers keep
itching with time-and-foot disease,
poor undernourished eaters of the hours
of Eastern Standard Bread. We want
to have beef, a tune that levels cattle.
Lastly, nations, belonging
to four main groups:
horses, camels, cattle, and elephants
we arrange and rearrange in various ways
upon our floor. How utterly we playroom.
How far the meridian reaches. All these
are a flash in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
We’ve the best planet standing in radius
of those ships with envious eyes, convinced
astronomical divisions serve as bridges.
While the policemen, it is true, have been
an enormous improvement in our questions,
we must the merciless mercenary sub-species
be. They must go. So, torches high,
look broadly in a blue search.
Articular evening closes on the planet
Shining and distinguished nursery thing
like a meteor unsuspended.
To learn of the origin of tomorrow
step close to the object,
press close to the beasts in the box.
If there’s one side there, one side there,
we’re picking one that never loses:
this infinite coming of stars,
an exaggerated overnova’s
coterie of Grovers and suchlike
that we pass off on an unsuspecting home world
as policemen. Weakly concerned,
we see the ceiling pitch
blue butchers at the Earth
with generous velocity.
It looks mortal on the surf, but Earth
is an enormous astronomically
exercised Mentional History Museum.
Much like a heap of rain.
Their little arrival at this great disk,
swimming on the popular crowd
of memories, moving to solar dance music
—just a slight atmospheric disillusionment.
This is a norchestra: we play
what doesn’t or what does not exist
like somebody else’s dead game.
Trade in the clock, worthless watch
of the heavens, for an afterlife.
One moment, ladies and gentlemen.
Police are trying to rope off the scene,
their plans against us in a mess.
Our next most important possession
after our present natures
sing closed will be the latest bullet.
Metal on its way, we play
the huge cylinder-parent
pointed at disillusionment.
The term is probabilitarism. The war, short
of unusual size, besides the transient
creatures that swarm and multiply,
mouths tannic with red, is the norm.
Several explosions occurringing
in ears are nothing unusual. Soldiers keep
itching with time-and-foot disease,
poor undernourished eaters of the hours
of Eastern Standard Bread. We want
to have beef, a tune that levels cattle.
Lastly, nations, belonging
to four main groups:
horses, camels, cattle, and elephants
we arrange and rearrange in various ways
upon our floor. How utterly we playroom.
How far the meridian reaches. All these
are a flash in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
We’ve the best planet standing in radius
of those ships with envious eyes, convinced
astronomical divisions serve as bridges.
While the policemen, it is true, have been
an enormous improvement in our questions,
we must the merciless mercenary sub-species
be. They must go. So, torches high,
look broadly in a blue search.
Articular evening closes on the planet