"Kali breathes this fire"

Finally got my new book finished after much buggering about, since I need to be comfortable with it, it being about the Divine Mother as it is. But Maa Kali cherishes imperfection & impurity, so that's something of a consolation. I am releasing it now because I have been constantly & obsessively adding to it, & want to hurry up with writing the next book about Matangi instead.

It is on sale here at Lulu, & here it now is on Amazon at this link. It is listed on  Amazon UK as well. The book is more expensive than I might wish, £12.50 or $16.50, with other currencies at corresponding rates, but blame the twats at Amazon for that, given that the book is 232 pages in length.

Four poems are on the images below, one of which is on two pages. 

The book contains a 45 page introduction about Kali. The introduction does not pretend to be comprehensive but relates the scriptures about Her to posthumanism, & the selective & creative nature of reincarnation, & speaks of the ultimate eternal return after the dissolution, when Her restive & fickle nature will create again. Some of this is drawn from the Posthuman poetry manifesto & adds to that. (Here the manifesto is on Amazon too.) Anyway, as Ramakrishna Paramahamsa wrote, She only saves one in a hundred thousand. 

The introduction also includes much ranting about narcissism, neo-colonialism against indigenous peoples, the patriarchy, the caste system, the narcissism of many "gurus", & the disgraceful British empire.

Blurb, cover, & samples follow:

This book is the first about Kali Maa & the Mahavidyas that McLean has written. This is what he proposes to write about in the future. 

The book includes a 45 page introduction in which McLean relates the Divine Mother to posthuman themes. There will no full manifesto on the basis of this but the ideas will be developed in later books.

The cover image is Kali's yantra.

New book by Carolyn Srygley Moore

 We all have a past, Watson. Ghosts. They are the shadows that define our every sunny day.

// Sherlock Holmes;
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

We have just completed a book called For All of My Beautiful Ghosts by awesome American poet Carolyn Srygley Moore. Carolyn actually writes real poems, which is enormously unusual nowadays, & we have done this book for her with higher quality coloured ink for the 177 numbered pages, since it also contains photos.

EDIT: It printed fine &, after final edits, here it is at Lulu, For All of My Beautiful Ghosts. Because of the ink, it's more expensive, though, to cut costs for the buyer, we did at first not sell it from corporate scumbags Amazon we have now made it more expensive & moved it to distribution through Amazon. This is because people are prepared to purchase it there, & evidently prefer to spend more rather than less. The Amazon link is here & the book is now available there. I would prefer that you buy it from Lulu though, since this gives Carolyn a lot more money, ten times more, because Amazon are bloody robber barons, & she deserves it.

I shall almost certainly review it later, but I am currently reading about Kali Maa & finishing my book about Her as primal goddess in the Mahavidyas. Carolyn sets a bloody high bar for me with her wonderful book, but I want it to be my best ever.

Cover, featuring a collage by Carolyn herself, & my blurb follow:

Posthuman Poetry & Prose is delighted to release this book of poems by Carolyn Srygley Moore, a poet & artist resident in New York State.

These poems tell a life, & they are of ghosts in the sense that what one relates to is ghostly; it is the poematic impulse, which is to capture the past, to prove that it was real & that it still is, to produce "a photograph of the feast in mourning", as Derrida so aptly puts it, so there is always poem when the ghosts fade at sunset & earth is there, sustaining the futility that is world.

"Alien Songs" by Tanya Rakh & Ndotono Waweru

Delighted to announce the arrival of a book of duets by Tanya Rakh & Ndotono Waweru from Posthuman Poetry & Prose. The poems in Alien Songs, on sale here, & on sale here at Amazon, are of the posthuman diaspora that learns to survive beyond identity. Only the divergent returns. Only what is "alien", in the sense of estranged from humanist traditions, only what is Dionysian individuation - not the I, the self, & their identity - will be validated by the posthuman naissance that celebrates the chaos of the eternal return, where the subject is the Other, & alienated, in principle, from its "self" by the Kantian "Cogito for a dissolved Self: the Self of 'I think' includ[ing] in its essence a receptivity of intuition in relation to which I is already an other." (Deleuze). The chaosmos goddess creates is anarchic; identities are weak, they do not return. 

& poetry just is a nostalgia for presence, for simple self-identity, for all the substantial constructs, or so Derrida tells us. But poetry needs to be the inarticulate cry of intensity, the indeterminate, that which is not concealed behind a name or a face  but dances its passion in the flame & naked. Poetry needs to capture this, per impossibile - it might scream to that which throbs an instant in the meat & cannot be measured against anything. Otherwise things play real when you look at them & words grow into unreliable maps & forget what stars there are.

Though I publish others on an occasional basis, Tanya is basically the other half of posthuman poetry, & when I return to goddess it is my hope that she will take it over. It is a privilege to publish all of her previous & forthcoming work, & a delight to see how seamless this collaboration with Ndotono is.

Tanya & Ndotono wrote this intro

Alien Songs is a fully collaborative collection of duets in verse. These duets each stand alone as individual pieces, but also join together to create an amalgamated star atlas for a breathing and multitextured extraterrestrial world.

Each of our songs embodies an aspect of this world—some echo an element, others an organ, yet others a phenomena of nature—and there are many more totems to explore. All of these pieces, separately and combined, are calls to a connection beyond the confines of everyday space and time, the heavy matter of humanity.

While the maladjusted soul may not be able to easily drag its accompanying body off this planet for a spell, it can dissolve for a while between astral wind currents when the right words are sung. These duets are incantations, oracles, scribblings on the walls of the heart. By reading them, we hope all lonely Aliens can catch a few glimmers of their home stars.

Tanya Rakh and Ndotono Waweru

The book is absolutely amazing, & the cover is below, with thanks to the brilliant photographer Shaina Sterrett for letting us use her image. Here is Shaina's Instagram where she shares her art.

Here is a sample poem online at Spillwords at this link. Alien Songs is on sale at this link. it can also be found on Amazon at this link. Note that it is better for the writers if you buy direct from Lulu.

I am looking forward to the publication of Tanya Rakh's ghost fractals soon, goddess willing. There will also be a book of visual poetry, vispo, coming from Tanya too, this will be printed with quality paper & ink, everything you do to the moon. It will be awesome.

A new posthuman poetry manifesto

The manifesto about posthumanism that was posted previously in this blog now serves as the the introduction to my recent book of poems, everything essential. It builds upon the two previous manifestos about antinatalism & posthumanism that were included in the earlier books too much human & goddess says, Emma.

But I have now released a book of prose that isn't a novel. It's a book of theory about posthumanism, focused on deep ecology, goddess, & poetics, There is a fair amount about the varieties of posthumanism, about feminist new materialism, about Heidegger & Derrida's discussion of poetics, about deep ecology, earth & world, becomings-animal, & a discussion of Deleuze & temporality. Also, naturally, there is much about goddess & Tiamat, prior to the patriarchal deities of Babylon & later. All this in detail in the long version that is now on sale, the full version of the introductory manifesto in everything essential.

In this book I try to deal with fairly difficult subjects in a manner that is reasonably comprehensible to the average reader. I don't know if I succeed, but the ambition is to make somewhat abstruse subjects fairly accessible, & avoid too much empty & trendy verbiage.

First, though, here is the poetry book with the shortened introductory form of the manifesto - everything essential at Lulu. Then here is the Amazon UK link, & here is the link to Amazon USA.

Now this is the Lulu link for the full version, A new posthuman poetry manifesto, the proof looking great. Here is the manifesto on Amazon UK, & it is on US Amazon at this link. The covers for both books are directly below too. The table of contents for the full manifesto follows.

 

Review of my "everything essential", by Carolyn Srygley-Moore

The book reviewed below, 205 pages of poems, & including a version of the new posthuman poetry manifesto, is on sale at this link. This link is to the book on Amazon UK, &, of course, this link is to Amazon USA. As always, i would prefer that you buy it from Lulu direct, but, if you hate trade unions or just need free shipping from Prime, you can use goddam Amazon.

Very grateful for this review of my (very soon) forthcoming everything essential by Carolyn Srygley-Moore. Delighted by this, I preserve her formatting as well as possible, given the exigencies of blogging. I would simply point out that I am not a philosopher, & am not sure what that would even mean (thus alluding, & without a trace of embarrassment, to Derrida), & I would add that memory, fairly obviously, is confabulation, telling stories. But still it's real, for, like all illusory constructs, time is perfectly real on its own terms. 

Review of everything essential
A book by David C. McLean.
By Carolyn Srygley-Moore, author of ‘miracles of the BloG: a series & Ode to Horatio and Other Saviors & other books, also with one forthcoming in the future from Posthuman Poetry & Prose.

“”

I am no philosopher.
However I’ve been a reader
And appreciator of David’s poetry for over a decade. (He is a writer of prose and a fine photographer as well.) We have also become friends. For a few years we lost contact. In those years David discovered & embraced
The Goddess.

When, via social media,
We first began exchanging writings
David professed a stern atheism; yet he
Arrived to my work (I then expressed
Myself as a Christian) without a derisive
Attitude; he was not contemptuous, and
Was able to read my work without derision.
That’s where I approach his new book.
With a blank slate attempted if not completely possible.

“”

McLean is a philosopher.
I arrive to this book with some cognizance
Of his prior work, and the tangentiality
That work has to this book.

“Ghosts.” That is
My echo. From my sense of his past work & the echo I cannot shake while reading.

“”

This book ,
Emma, & the poet, fuse into an amazement, a carnal revival occurring
On the head of a pin. There is no time.
Memory exists in the sensate, the beast,
A celebration that cannot be named
For language would corrupt that celebration.

“”

David, the person, tells me that we — humans, beings, sentient —; have no past.
Maybe all beings, in fact.

Yet memory, in these poems, is acknowledged. Remember that language
By no fault —: corrupts.

This is not the pop psychology of so called “false memory.” For memory in these
Poems is. Present carnal sacred.

“”

Is Emma (by the perspective of one who feels constrained by time as construct) a way of erasing
History per-say ( which David calls to my attention as “not mentioned” in the book)
Of radically traveling via Emma & goddess
Into the past, bringing back with him
The ghosts that riddled his early
Books with a kind of stasis however
Appreciative of the absurd //; returning
In Emma’s skirt pockets ghosts that
Have heartbeats without degeneration,
For time, and the past, are not
To be acknowledged. The Goddess is.

Without time; with the circularity, the
Regeneration exigent to the Goddess
Paradigm:
Emma exists past the perversion by
A language that McLean crafts
Flawlessly, intensely, even effortlessly.
As the reader I felt
Gratification that any
Person could experience love
With the transgressive intensity
Embodied in these poems.
The blaze, the beauty, and the
Resultant affirmation of what
Truth can be //: this is what I take
Away. & I am
Happy, especially for my friend.

“”

Foucault & Kafka, the incarceration &
The prisoner of the Penal Colony ::
Are crashed into, crushed as shell to
Grit. & we are freed. We are
Liberated by a manipulator of
Language// through
Language. We are left without
Corruption & the
Feeling Is marvelous.

Hence: even to those who find history
A weight, a presumptive cargo -/:
To whom trying to see time as not only irrelevant but nonexistent-:

What is remembering?

“”

What is sacred? Not time. Not the past.
But the dance on the head of a pin,
Beyond carnal, love, all consuming.

Emma is a means of liberation for
Those who devour these poems.
Where decay & death are acknowledged,
Even death —: endings are not.
All is infinite. A comforting, and uncomfortable, insinuation.

“Here we are memory” is a poem title
That gives me permission to read
These poems, & my personhood,
As a dialogue & confrontation & challenge
To /: my history my past. My ghosts
My memory. It is a profound
Permission coming from David
McLean, grab it. Writer. Philosopher.

Hold on.
Prepare yourself for a festival.
Dark & bright,

Carolyn Srygley-Moore

Six samples from forthcoming "everything essential"

Here are six samples from my forthcoming everything essential, due whenever we see & approve the proof copy. The cover comes first. The manifesto that introduces the book was previously posted below in this blog at this link. Here it is on Amazon UK. Here on Amazon USA. Now it is lengthened & made more complete, & has grown into a book of its own, A posthuman poetry manifesto which I will post a couple of weeks after this one is out. The book is reviewed above by Carolyn Srygley-Moore in this post.

EDIT: Out now.

I update this post to note that I have approved the proof & allowed the 205 page book via Posthuman Poetry & Prose's storefront, where it is on sale at this link, & made it available on Amazon, Ingram, B&N, etc, where it will appear in due course.

The book is the third book of poems since my return to the UK, & themes & inspirations include nature in North Somerset; goddess Tiamat; posthumanism & postmodernism; Deleuze & Guattari's becoming animal & rhizomes; Foucault's antihumanism & antifascism; Derrida's ethics, poetics, & ethopoetics; Nietzsche in general, especially the return as the return of the dissolved self; Lyotard's intensity; new materialism; indeterminacy; goddess chaos versus patriarchal order; the Enuma Elish; & love, sexuality, & BDSM.

The book is 205 numbered pages, with a 45 page introductory manifesto that took a lot of work. I have edited this & given more attention to it than usual. It's a sort of statement. The manifesto is about posthumanism, goddess Tiamat, chaos, & posthuman poetics, & I try to enact it in the poems - the dissolution of the ego in Deleuze's reading of the Nietzschean eternal return, the intensity, the beast, the ahuman that I am become. It is very clearly a book of poems for Emma, but it is not part of the series; she is muse & motivator, but there is more to these poems, for the sexual intenisty that was always there has now pervaded everything - from goddess to brutality, from butterflies to philosophy.

I have also, as noted, finished a prose book with a more extensive version of the manifesto that I shall publish separately. The manifesto in the new prose version is close to 100 numbered pages & is due to become available once I approve the proof in a while.A new book to be called (probably) we are flesh of Tiamat is being written.

Lulu spotlight

Here is the Lulu spotlight for Posthuman Poetry & Prose. These are the books I have available, as well as books by Tanya Rakh, Carolyn Srygley Mooore, & Linnet Phoenix, here at this link. There is now also a collaboration between Tanya Rakh & Ndotono Waweru. Lulu charge postage, unlike Prime, but this has become much more reasonable than it used to be.

All my extant books from Posthuman Poetry & Prose, & some other places earlier, are there. There are three novels, all fairly weird, basically anti-novels. There are several chapbooks, & a considerable number of books of poetry. 

Themes in the books range from antinatalist & posthumanist manifestos, discussions of cPTSD & trauma, the goddesses Tiamat, Lilītu, Lamaštû, & Kali Maa, the great mother, becomings_animal, the beast, sexuality, BDSM, love, libidinal economy, the incommensurability of intensity, anarchism, diverse inequities, & psychiatric fascism. I am indebted to Deleuze & Guattari, Lyotard, Foucault, Mother Juliana of Norwich, Gertrude Stein, Derrida, & others for inspiration. 

More books by me are due in the future, & all the future works by Tanya Rakh, who is half of Posthuman Poetry & Prose, & occasional books by some others in the future.

As you may know, Amazon are sleazy & try to prevent unionization so they can carry on treating their workers like shit. They also, in my case at least, frequently list books from the wrong places, like Book depository, so you have to find the Amazon version yourself. As noted, it is way better if you buy them from here, unless relying on prime for shipping. In any case, Lulu are not quite as expensive for shipping as they used to be.

Jonathan Rossignol at LFLR Network

Thanks to Jonathan Rossignol, American occult writer, for this awesome kickass podcast here on YouTube. The bit about me is chapter two of the video, which starts round 29 minutes in. The link in the first sentence starts at the right place for the shoutout to me, but the embedded video below the pigeon starts at the beginning.

 

Here is his website. 

This is great, & it's really kind of him to do this &, yes, I do actually know John Z Pigeon on Twitter. 

 

Samples from "skulls & dust"

EDIT. This book is now approved for sale and is available at this link. It is now also on Amazon UK & at this link. On US Amazon is is here at this link.

Here samples from fortchcoming skulls & dust, for Linnet with massive gratitude for saving me, due on the 29th of this month. The blurb follows, a trifle frivolous, & cover comes first. 

This book marks the return of Emma to the poems. The book that I am writing now, everything essential, though not part of the Emma series sensu strictissimo, completes her return as my perfect muse, the one that first made me become beast, the fire that is my intensity, the source of the mysticism in the writing now, & the poems about her are mixed in with the nature poetry of the first two books. My intention for the future is to integrate the two threads - to write the poems about nature, the trees, the ghosts here, Somerset, & the goddess, who is here as She is everywhere, but to combine these with the theme of Emma, since Emma is the one that made me beast meat & intensity, madness & animal; she is the one that created me.

This is the second collection of poems written by McLean since his return to the UK this year. It writes of how the goddess is to be seen present in the nature of Somerset. This is a book about flesh & intensity, the fire inside. Some parts are protective magic, & McLean also has issues with the ghost that has always accompanied him, but they are ultimately reconciled.

 

Amazon Author Page Update

Note that Amazon do not always have the books listed as first choice from them, but from more expensive sites like Book Depository, though you can generally find the Amazon version. If you want to avoid this scam, please feel free to order from Lulu, since Lulu have a shipping fee, but sell at the reasonable price that I assign. This whole sentence links to their storefront for Posthuman Poetry & Prose. In general it is better that you buy from them. Lulu pay me as writer more, & they pay quicker.

Here is my Amazon.com Author Page, at this link. I have recently updated this, approving the proof & so forth, so that all the books are available there now. The cover to the most recent book is at the top of the included pictures, & a new one is being written right now.

Here is the link to amazon.co.uk where they are also available.

All my relevant works from Posthuman Poetry & Prose, & some other places earlier, are there. There are three novels, all fairly unconventional. There are several chapbooks, & a considerable number of books of poetry. I have reduced the prices on the older ones, from other publishers than PPP, to conform to my current pricing, since I think the original prices were a trifle high, & the listings on Amazon now reflect this change. 

Themes in the books range from antinatalist & posthumanist manifestos, discussions of cPTSD & trauma, the goddess, the great mother, becomings_animal, the beast, sexuality, BDSM, love, libidinal economy, the incommensurablity of intensity, diverse inequities, & psychiatric fascism. 

I am indebted to Deleuze & Guattari, Lyotard, Foucault, Mother Juliana of Norwich, Gertrude Stein, Derrida, & others for inspiration.

 

Do me a favour though, if you can, & buy from the Posthuman Poetry & Prose spotlight at Lulu, at this link. We get way more money from them, as noted, & much quicker too, since Amazon don't just fuck with their employees, they fuck with everybody. 

Here is the Amazon Author Page for Tanya Rakh, the other half of this posthuman project, where she has two books in their current versions from Posthuman Poetry & Prose. Linnet Phoenix' has published book with Posthuman Poetry & Prose which is only available here at Lulu due to the cost of better paper, printing the images, & so forth. Here is Linnet's blog though, where her other books are linked. Here is the one book with us Post-ed on Your Mirror, linked at Lulu. 

We are very excited to have ghost fractals by Tanya Rakh in the pipeline, & Tanya is going to be publishing with Posthuman Poetry & Prose in the future. 

Samples from "goddess gives sun enough"

EDIT: This book is now on sale here at Lulu, Amazon too. This link is to UK Amazon. This link is to US amazon.com.

I have a new book of poems forthcoming soon, the first since moving to the UK, which will be available for sale once I have seen the proof. By me, David C. McLean, from Posthuman Poetry & Prose, goddess gives sun enough. Five samples & cover below. I shall update this post once I have seen the physical cover & made the book available for sale. 

Blurb follows, then cover:

This book is the first written since McLean returned to England in 2022 , & follows a series of books of love poetry. As such, it shows an attempt to reorient to a life that is meaningful because of earth, nature, beast, & goddess, without any focus for the sexuality with which the flesh, as such, is instinct, & without any sense of social connection. The intensity differs thereby in its focus, though some themes are retained. These are poems about living on, & trusting in the goddess to give the fire & the words one needs to live & feel.

 

The three current novels by David C. McLean

Though I generally write poetry, I have also written three novels. The first of these is Henrietta Remembers, and it is here at Lulu. & here follows the Amazon link.  This book was substantially revised in 2021 & has a nice cover. It's a sort of Nausea for nihilists. The Lulu link is better to use as far as I am concerned, though Amazon now have the updated version with a somewhat smaller font.

A novel without plot about a murder rising from the emptiness that is words. David McLean's first novel demonstrates that the form is neither dead nor the exclusive province of literary establishment windbags. "A very nasty book. The repetition, rather than diminishing the effect, served rather to hammer home the innate nastiness and bleakness until it rang like a heavenly bell."
David Mitchell - author

The second is flesh & resurrection, and it is here at Lulu. It is also here at Amazon. This is also substantially revised in 2021. It is about a man who seems to be dead & to have no memory of his life, & Henrietta is involved too. Otherwise they drink, argue, & wander off somewhere at the end.

The blurb says: 

Even more fucked up than McLean's first novel (Henrietta Remembers), which makes it well better, it abandons all pretense of plot & degenerates nicely into an inchoate prose poem.

 

 

The third was written more recently, divinity extractor fan my anti-novel on Lulu. Here it is on sale at Amazon. This is for Emma more explicitly, but they all are.

Blurb follows

This is a novel that became an anti-novel. It quotes extensively from Lyotard, Artaud, Nietzsche, & Burton's "The Anatomy of Melancholy". It explores the posthuman, antinatalism, overpopulation, & ecology. It is primarily an attempt by the author to identify the theoretical underpinnings, as it were, of his love for his muse, Emma, in the form of a bizarre prose poem that grew into a bizarre novel. Sacher-Masoch & St. Augustine of Hippo are sampled in & cited, with footnotes & everything. Deleuze & Guattari with their becoming-animal are featured as well, at some length.