#CrashawPrize The shortlist in profile: Stephen Nelson

Stephen Nelson’s shortlisted title Lunar Poems for New Religions is very much a Scottish book but it’s trajectory pushes off in numerous directions — it’s both intellectually, spiritually and verbally rich (often writing in dialect with great gusto) — with a great deal of zesty humour thrown in. It’s also a very visual book, parts of which belong to a particularly Scottish strand of concrete poetry. In this article we profile the writer and his work.

Stephen Nelson was born in Motherwell, Scotland in 1970, to the King of Belguim and his wife, a member of the Swedish Royal Family. He was educated in a monastery in Bhutan where he quickly learned the simultaneous arts of telepathy and levitation. He gave it all up for poetry, however, and now lives in a tower block somewhere in South Lanarkshire, having denounced his royal heritage and all its attendant privileges. His interests include the sun, rain, snow, grass, beaches, islands, mountains. At present he doesn’t own a bicycle, although that may change in the near future as he is intent on losing a bit of weight. He enjoys being an Anglican.

The Interview

“Hello Stephen, I loved your book and I’m very happy to see it shortlisted for this year’s prize. I wanted to ask you a few questions to introduce you to our readers. Firstly, where did the book begin for you, how did the book come to be written?”

“The book began as a light on a distant planet … no, the book began as the seed of a hallucinogenic plant deep in the Amazonian rainforest … no, OK, the book began as a response to the fact that I could really do this (write), that I enjoyed doing it, and that I could do it in a virtual community of writers, artists, and poets who would support and encourage and share their work over many miles via the internet.”

“Well, it’s clear you can write, I was left considering the trajectory of the book which has a powerful but accessible spiritual element to it — what was going on in your life while you were writing it?”

“A lot of inner work — meditation, retreats, an ongoing Kundalini awakening. That sounds a bit wacko, but I was also enjoying a lot of family dinners at the time, which is a nice, everyday sort of thing. My sister got married. My niece and nephew left school. I drank a lot of coffee, particularly in the afternoon after writing.”

I think we can see that kind of internal investment going on in the text, lots of revelations. Lots of discoveries. Lots of fun, too. But what do you think were the real driving elements within the book — the things that moved it all forward for you?

“This is a difficult question to answer because a lot of what I write springs from the unconscious mind and really there was a desire to touch something there, to bring light, to realise something about myself and about the world and where it was going. This inevitably means incorporating a lot of diversity in terms of style and form which might reflect the richness of it all, but also a depth that I could only glimpse at times. I really want to wake up (alarm bells ring). I really want people to wake up (alarm bells going off their rocker now). I really want to experience the fullness of who we are in community (ah, that’s not so bad). I mean really, really. Does the book touch on that? Probably not. But the excitement of creating, of making and sounding is at the heart of it all, so I guess the driving element is simply the creative force. Which is Kundalini energy.”

How long did all this take?

“It probably took about a year to bring it together, although some of the poems go further back than that.”

“I wondered if there was anyone behind all this, somebody or some group of folks who helped influenced your creative life, who provided stimulus and, you know, permission.”

“My father started it all for me. He forced me at gunpoint to buy a book on holiday as a child instead of candy floss and rock candy. But then, as I got down to writing, the visual poetry community I got involved with and the wealth of poly-poets in that community — folks like Geof Huth, Gary Barwin, Troy Lloyd, Mike Cannell, Satu Kaikkonen and so many others — inspired me to create daily, to think about language, how it sounds, what it looks like, what it attempts to communicate. They are my brothers and sisters. It’s very beautiful. Very beautiful.”

“Yes. So where is it all heading now. Where’s the writing life moving to, what are you working on?”

“I simply want to explore the diversity of styles and forms I enjoy working in — minimalism, prose poetry, concrete poetry, free verse (particularly in regional Scots dialect/Glaswegian/Lanarkshirean) — and perhaps find new ways of writing, new avenues to venture down. But I want it all to hang on the thread of evolution of language and consciousness. I really am interested in the moment of poetry, awareness of poetry everywhere, awareness of the flicker of poetry that silently escapes from the mind and disintegrates. I want to become one with poetry.”

“Thanks very much for talking to me.”

This image above is a visual poem by Nelson which “reflects the ongoing karmic walk of life in the poetry community — or something like that.”

Here below is a poem by Nelson, written in regional dialect, which was first published in Magma. It’s in two parts:

So High, So Hung Up

1.

Gouchin oan E in the

shittiest nightclub

imaginable cheap beer n

slapper sex in silver sequined mini-

dress dress up dress doon

blissful slabs ae flesh

quiverin roon God’s grandeur.

Music’s a beist n a

beat wi a burd screamin

the grace ae romance n

the pride ae her sex wi us

a random dance ae molecules.

O’er ma heid I feel

the love ae the place

n I want tae scream fir love

the love ae aw that’s floatin

in the sea above n the sky

below … love fur the

jellied cunt in the corner

the puir cow wi the squinty eyeball

the hard bastard wi the blade in his jaiket.

Noo, twenty years on,

I pity every beetle

I crush and flush doon the pan

wi every other ounce ae shit n piss

wrapped in a shroud ae

soft quilted velvet

— ah the bliss ae the world.

2.

Trippin oan Acid in a high rise

wi a couple ae guys and a lassie

in it fir a laugh but me wi ridiculous

pretensions ae highest yoga tantra

n astral elevation possibly a vision

ae God …

Leavin that aside, the ither day I

bought a book on LSD research and

contacted a transpersonal psychotherapist.

Nae acid flashbacks, nae drug enduced

schizoid behaviour (as yet) but a

history ae Kundalini

awakenin n several warm spots

in ma body tender n sweet as

marshmallow n jist so incredibly

poignant aw ae it.

I see yon acid trip n think

ae the lassie how she gave me

an incredible hard-on wi wild

Babylonian fantasies whirlin in

ma brain n Shiva lingam worship

wrappin itsel roon the high rise

so wired oan the drug

so constrained by perinatal

neurosis

fuck it mother

fuck it father.

In the book, subjects experienced

hours ae oceanic sex

reported visions ae

Babylonian orgies

acquired a taste for the forbidden

the exotic

the perverse.

And tae think I wis brought up in the

Plymouth Brithren!

Discover more about Stephen Nelson

Stephen Nelson’s blog: http://afterlights.blogspot.com.

And here are a few links to Nelson’s work online:

http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue14_Nelson.html

http://archive.listenlight.net/18/stephen-nelson

http://www.shadowtrain.com/id377.html

http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2010/07/stephen-nelson-and-mike-cannell-rise.html

http://poetrywriting.org/Sketchbook3-12Dec08/Sketchbook_3-12_December_2008_Genre_Free_Verse_Stephen_Nelson.htm

http://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2011/01/stephen-nelson.html

And finally a review of Nelson’s chapbook, Flylyght (The Knives, Forks and Spoons Press), by Colin Herd:

http://www.colin-herd.com/2010/12/review-of-flylyght-by-stephen-nelson.html