“With this book of poems Etel Adnan establishes herself as a major poet who belongs beside internationally acclaimed poets like Tranströmer, Bly, Neruda, Vallejo, and Pessoa.”—Eric Sellin

A new volume of aphoristic prose and philosophical poetry from Etel Adnan, whose work The New York Times recently described as the “meditative heir to Nietzsche’s aphorisms, Rilke’s Book of Hours and the verses of Sufi mysticism.” She writes: “Reality is messianic / apocalyptic / my soul is my terror.”

Produced on the occasion of Richard Tuttle’s exhibition TheStars at Modern Art, London, 1 October–21 November, 2020.

Bearing a clear resemblance to some of Tuttle’s early work from the 1970s, such as his iconic Rope Piece (1974), which came to typify his bold approach to scale, these new works are made predominantly from plywood, paint, paper and metal wire, each sits atop its own hand-made shelf, annotated by Tuttle with its particular title, and secured to the wall with a single nail. The publication documents the new work alongside a series of Tuttle’s corresponding poems.

This series of 23 new (Soma)tic poetry rituals and resulting poems by CAConrad create what we can refer to as an “extreme present” set to reveal the creative viability of everything around us. Poetry rituals such as riding escalators and showing photographs of himself to strangers asking, “Excuse me, have you seen this person?” In another he pollinates flowers for security cameras, exclaiming, “I’M A POLLINATOR, I’M A POLLINATOR!” One was written with a ghost, another by stargazing to build his own constellations. (Soma)tic rituals are a practice of unorthodox steps aimed at breaking us out of the quotidian and into a more political and physical spiritual consciousness of The New Wilderness.

Winner of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Poetry. After his boyfriend Earth’s murder, CAConrad was looking for a (Soma)tic poetry ritual to overcome his depression. This new book of 18 rituals and their resulting poems contains that success, along with other political actions and exercises that testify to poetry’s ability to reconnect us and help put an end to our alienation from the planet.

Since their 2005 inception, CAConrad’s (Soma)tic exercises have been summoning the whole spectrum of human experience in the name of poetry. A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon collects 27 new and previously published exercises and their emerging poems, incorporating unorthodox steps in the writing process from the tangible everyday to the cosmos of the imagination. Together they manifest as an urgent call for a connective, concentrated, and unfettered creativity.