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Marcus Slease

Goodreads Author

Born

in Portadown, Ireland

April 06, 1974

Website

https://nevermindthebeasts.com

Twitter

postpran

Genre

Fiction, Poetry, Art

Influences

Lydia Davis, Russell Edson, Lukáš Tomin, Jeanette Winterson, Donald Ba ...more

Member Since

June 2007

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Born in Portadown, Northern Ireland, I have made my home in Turkey, Poland, Italy, South Korea, the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom – experiences that inform my absurd-surreal stories. My writing has been translated into Danish and Polish & featured in the Best British Poetry series. My essays, stories, poems, and reviews have appeared in various anthologies and magazines in Europe and North America, including Tin House, Fence, 3:AM, Sprung Formal, Rain Taxi, Poetry, and Versopolis Review. I have performed my work at various festivals and art galleries in Prague, Madrid, London, Bristol, Manchester, North Carolina, and Ireland. Currently, I live in Castelldefels, Spain and teach high school literature in Barcelona. My debut nov Born in Portadown, Northern Ireland, I have made my home in Turkey, Poland, Italy, South Korea, the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom – experiences that inform my absurd-surreal stories. My writing has been translated into Danish and Polish & featured in the Best British Poetry series. My essays, stories, poems, and reviews have appeared in various anthologies and magazines in Europe and North America, including Tin House, Fence, 3:AM, Sprung Formal, Rain Taxi, Poetry, and Versopolis Review. I have performed my work at various festivals and art galleries in Prague, Madrid, London, Bristol, Manchester, North Carolina, and Ireland. Currently, I live in Castelldefels, Spain and teach high school literature in Barcelona. My debut novel, Never Mind the Beasts, is available from Dostoyevsky Wannabe.

"Marcus Slease’s ‘Never Mind the Beasts’: probably the wildest bildungsroman since ‘Anti-Oedipus’; imagine Joyce’s ‘Portrait…’ being retold by a Leopold Bloom on a mission to steal back epiphanies from standarized marketing. An essential, liberating read."

Matt Travers, broke Mayakovsky fan

"Writing actually as love! Marcus Slease’s crinkling, crackling prose is full of sparks, full of troubles, full of wonder. Never Mind the Beasts radiates with the force, brevity and immediacy of stylists like Mary Robison, Rikki Ducornet and Diane Williams. “The demand to love,” wrote Roland Barthes at the beginning of Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes; “overflows, leaks, skids, shifts, slips”. “Writing to touch with letters, with lips, with breath,” wrote Hélène Cixous in Coming to Writing. These are the thrilling, vibratory spaces, movements and possibilities Slease’s writing opens up."

Colin Herd, author of You Name It

"Say Lydia Davis and Donald Barthelme had a son, and his life story was painted by Basquiat, and the paintings were ground up into a spice, then used to flavour a crazy-hot dish you just can’t stop eating while the scenery shifts around you: that taste might be something like Never Mind the Beasts."

Ruby Cowling, author of This Paradise

"robust pro aktiv quixotik goes evreewher is from evreewher nouns ar verbs verbs ar yu a nu way uv intraktivitee langwage th narrativ rocks takes yu evreewher thers no conclewsyun its in th going poignant tragik ekstatik have anothr box top meeting yu at th melting grange th adventurs dont stop home keeps mooving evn yu dont need 2 carree th props opn ths wun up each page fluid change meeting yu in yu alive wundrful a great xperiens ths book."

bill bissett, author of Breth /the treez uv lunaria

...more

1454 posts
Marcus Slease's Blog

Translation Tuesday: Three Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski

“Dragonflies
should without a doubt
fatten
themselves up on rich
pork shanks.”

Three absurdist minimalist poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski , translated by Peter Burzyński, are now up at ASYMPTOTE.

Grzegorz’s poems always set me right when I feel askew.

You can read them over here.

Combine Editions
Marcus Slease’s books

Average rating: 4.54 · 119 ratings · 27 reviews · 19 distinct works

	The Spirit of the Bathtub 4.50 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 2018	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	play yr kardz right 4.89 avg rating — 9 ratings — published 2017 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Green Monk 3.73 avg rating — 11 ratings — published 2018	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	GODZENIE it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 7 ratings — published 2009	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Never Mind The Beasts 4.67 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2020	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Mu (Dream) So 4.75 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2012	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Hello Tiny Bird Brain 4.50 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2012	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	from Smashing Time! it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2011	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The House of Zabka it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2013	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Rides really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Marcus Slease…

Marcus is Currently Reading

Marcus is currently reading

My Struggle: Book Two

by Karl Ove Knausgård

bookshelves: currently-reading

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May 26, 2020 03:17AM

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Marcus Slease wrote a new blog post Translation Tuesday: Three Poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski “Dragonfliesshould without a doubtfattenthemselves up on richpork shanks.”Three absurdist minimalist poems by Grzegorz Wróblewski , translated by Pete Read more of this blog post »
Oct 08, 2026 12:31AM · like

More of Marcus's books…

Marcus’s Quotes

“i don't want to hate the president

i don't want to go to harvard

i don't want to win the pulitzer prize

i just want to sit in my bathtub

and think about relationships i will never have

with people i will never meet

and then go lay in my bed

with a magnifying glass

and count all the stiches in my sheets

until i fall asleep

and wake up

to repeat again.”
― Ellen Kennedy

tags: poetry

35 likes

“I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman.”
― Anais Nin, Henry & June

1097 likes

“I want
To do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

tags: love

4293 likes

“The concept of virginity is a social construct. If you’re wondering if my commercial value, self-respect, and/or quality of my immortal soul has been affected by things that have gone in or out of my vagina the answer is no.”
― Christy Leigh Stewart

tags: feminism, virginity

10 likes

“Old women have a thing for me. And I don't mean a pinch-my-cheek, pat-my-head kind of thing. I mean a grab-my-ass, rub-my-junk, why-don't-you-push-my-wheelchair-into-the-broom-closet-so-we-can-get-nasty kind of thing.
It's f*cking disturbing.”
― Emma Chase, Tangled

98 likes

More of Marcus’s quotes…

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Marcus’s Groups

¡ POETRY ! — 22488 members — last activity Oct 07, 2026 06:07PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

Black Oceanographers — 238 members — last activity Dec 14, 2010 12:38PM
This group is designed to discuss books published by Black Ocean, receive updates on publications and get news on author events. All are welcome, only ...more

Dusie Press Books — 190 members — last activity Jul 13, 2009 07:17AM
*poetry poetry poetry* bookbooks, chaps, e-chaps by Dusie Press authors... All Books listed here are by poets published by Dusie Press, via the chap ...more

Furniture Press Books : Reviews and Musings — 44 members — last activity Apr 19, 2014 10:44AM
Furniture Press Books publishes a diverse range of literatures including poetry, poetics, essays, creative philosophy, librettos and prose experiments ...more

Marcus’s Friend Comments

Comments (showing 1-3) post a comment »

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message 3: by Marcus

Jan 23, 2013 04:28AM

Ah your quote from Bolaño hits the big P versus small p in poetry in some ways. I like anti poetry. Or anti pure is a better way to put it I think. Punk type aesthetic. Like Kathy Acker and such. The poems of Bill Burroughs as novels. That's what I like. The impure. Most of the time. In art, novels, poetry etc. etc. Cut ups. Fold ins. And so on.

You?

The bizarro lit stuff is interesting too. Read Lost in Cat Brain Land. Wasn't amazing. But liked it. Like a lot of the ideas and images in bizarro world of literature. The language used in bizarro lit doesn't excite me too much (so far). But like the crazy plots and ideas.

Also like some so-called Alt Lit. Like Sam Pink and Tao Lin.

You got some great books on your shelf. Mighty impressive. Wish I had an endless continual supply of books. Read about 2-3 per week at the moment. Usually on 2 hour commute on London tube.

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message 2: by Marcus

Jan 22, 2013 08:29AM

Thanks for the accept. Nice to meet you too Miranda. Some cool poetry out there. But not fond of poetry with a capital P. Love Kathy Acker and Burroughs (among others). Grzegorz is fab. Polish poet and painter living in Copenhagen. Great guy too. I'm working on a Burroughs/Acker inspired novel called Never Mind the Beasts. Taking a few years though. Meanwhile a bunch of short stories. One is up at a place called Moneybicycle called "The Arrangement." Anyway . . curious to hear what you think of Water. Been wondering whether or not to get it.

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message 1: by Marcus

Jun 23, 2009 06:14AM

Thanks Didi :-) I wasn't sure how that worked. By the way, I have made friends with a Polish artist and poet living in Copenhagen. We are going to do a big collaboration with poets from Denmark, Poland, UK.

His paintings are really cool as well and he has a lot of connections to the art world in Copenhagen. Would you be interested in anything for O&A?

Here is a quick link to a few of his paintings. I can get many many more paintings from him if you are interested. If not, no biggie.

Hope you are well.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/your...

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Marcus Slease

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