heaps of anagrams & their mutations by Emil Swells & Swithun Wells
MLSW books is pleased to announce the forthcoming publication of Phase Shape.s, heaps of anagrams and their mutations by Emil Swells and Swithun Wells: a light-hearted, quirky and sometimes queer collection of sixty anagrammatic poems, prompted by Emil’s love of quick crosswords, translation and language learning apps.
The 60 poems evolved from the curiosities of the anagram. They have elements of sound and visual poetry. The poems are semi-abstract, semi-surreal, semi-detached and sometimes half-baked.
Book launch on Tuesday 9 April.
How did this collection come about?
In the early twentieth century the great French writer André Gide wrote a book called Corydon in defence of homosexuality, which has always been an important element of human civilisation. Gide considered that Corydon was his most important work and first published it one hundred years ago in 1924, despite friends’ concerns that its reasoned and passionate defence of the naturalness of homosexuality would harm his reputation.
Emil read the elegant Gallimard–Nouvelle Revue Française edition with its sober cover design: pale straw yellow background, austere black and red type with simple black and double red line framing. As they read, Emil’s eyes glazed over and saw Croydon, prompted by thoughts of their newly-divorced lesbian friend who had sadly had to move to Norbury from Balham and was feeling emotionally and geographically dislocated.
The ways in which letters in a word can dance mischievously set Emil to thinking about how feelings and meanings spring out of words and produce strange images: a beautiful ancient Greek shepherd boy, Corydon, frolicking among the hills and vales of verdant suburban South London.
Given Emil’s penchant for gay French writers, London and anagrams, no surprise that they all figure prominently in the collection. Marguerite Yourcenar, the first woman to be elected to the French Academy, was born Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour a Franco-Belgian aristocrat; she flipped the last bit of her name into her almost anagrammatic pseudonym. Her Memoirs of Hadrian tell of the passion between the eponymous Roman emperor and his young lover Antinous.
Marcel Proust, another part-time cross-channel shirt-lifting scribbler shape-shifted Whistler into Elstir as the paradigm artist in A la recherche du temps perdu.
Emil and Swithun’s Greater London is alluded to in Epsom poems, the aforementioned Croydon, The Sam, Crayford Daisy, but above all in Their Erith, birthplace of their ancestors. They sent a copy of PhaseShape.s to another native of the north Kent river port, the great poet, Wendy Cope, who responded, “It’s fun and very ingenious. I’m delighted with the Erith poem dedicated to me.”
As a translator fascinated by words, their strange and multiple forms, Emil became preoccupied by the ways in which slight rearrangements of the same sets of letters could produce curious variations and potentially novel meanings. As a result, some of the poems in the collection are both aural and visual, some are semi-abstract: abstractions from a primary source of meaning, but perhaps capable of transmitting other ideas, images or emotions.
Non-binary Emil (they/them) has long held in great esteem the American poet Marianne Moore. She referred to herself as her brother’s brother and insisted that her close family referred to her (he/him) with the masculine pronoun. Her/his/(their?) Poetry aims to “present for inspection, imaginary gardens with real toads in them.”
The German language has a beautiful expression, Aha-Erlebnis, to describe the moment when you solve a problem or you get a sudden insight, like finding the answer to a crossword clue or understanding a phrase in a new language.
Emil and I wish the readers of Phase Shape.s many real live toads and aha-experiences or even just an occasional haha!
We hope it sells well 😉
Swithun Wells
Kentish Town, 1st April 2024
ISBN: 978-1-7384493-3-0
Published by Scantech, Hastings, Great Britain, on behalf of MLSW Books.
Copyright © Swithun Wells, 2024. www.swithunwells.com
Phase Shape.s is available from the Owl Bookshop, Pritchard & Ure or on request by email to mlsw[at]duck.com
RRP £12.34
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