England 2K State Insekt by Tempest Miller

Once there was a time when I used to get a lot of free books sent to me because [it was possible to argue that] I was an “up-and-coming” something.

Many years later, I do still get the occasional free book, though rarely is it from the once hip ‘n’ happening indie presses who have become important institutions during the time in which I’ve become… nothing at all.

It used to be Dead Ink, Influx and Fitzcarraldo sending me excellent, memorable, and culturally significant works to read and comment on for free, but nowadays, when it happens, it’s mostly (not exclusively!) people directly reaching out often promoting their own self-published work. (Which is fine; I know my place..! I’m not a BookTok influencer: I have a blog that hasn’t had a redesign for around seven years…)

That is how I have come to this text, England 2K State Insekt by Tempest Miller.

Whenever anyone offers me a free book, I do always (unless it’s clearly fascistic or shit) say “yes”, and so Miller sent me five.

My initial “how generous!” response was briefly tempered when I realised that Miller had self-published one of these chapbooks every single month during the first half of this year. (The year is 2024, if you’re reading this in the future (or past).)

Maybe, I thought as I looked at Miller’s publication dates, this is a sign of a rush to publication, without the rigour and the checks of the normal delays of “publishing” rather than “posting” content, but maybe it’s not???

I’ve written all of this so far without opening any of the books, so hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised, and possibly I will be absolutely appalled by what I find within this first of the five chapbooks.

🙏🙏🙏

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It’s energetic poetry, in here.

Bouncing between free verse and prose poetry with (I think, but I didn’t count syllables) a few formal constraints possibly included in a couple of pieces…

Most of the poems are 2-3 pages long, and though this isn’t “long” for a poem, some of them do feel they would benefit from a little tighter cutting, a little bit of the ability to self-edit more harshly that comes with a longer gap between first and final draft.

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Tbh,the poetry and the writing of Tempest Miller reminded me of the kinda material I was producing a decade and a half ago when I didn’t really know what I wanted my writing to do and didn’t really know why I wanted it to do something.

What is clear here is a real and robust interest in literature and creativity… what is undeniable here is a clear commitment to the work of productivity and honing ones craft.

In 2011 or 2012 (I can’t remember which and I can’t quickly find the answer as I deleted all traces of it) I uploaded and self published a text I titled Tell Me About Love and subtitled, accurately, The Blood, Come and Vomit-Spattered Provincial Writing of S. Manley Hadley. I haven’t reread or re-edited much of the writing from that text in the many, many, many years since (with some exceptions) but I do, of course, remember much of it well. And what I remember is a similar energy, a similar tone, a similar…. unrefined youthfulness as appears in Miller’s text.

I mean that neither as compliment nor as a criticism, merely as an observation that what the young British (English?) writer writes doesn’t change that much from generation to generation…

We all rail at the inequality and feel like sexuality may both save us and trap us …

A contempt for the world as it exists but no real route towards anything different… A a a a a a a… an Englishness, I suppose. A recognisable one…

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There were lots of moments in this that I enjoyed a lot…

There’s a real energy throughout, and though some of that energy feels accidental rather than structured – a literal burst of creativity quickly typed down, rather than a hard-won writerly depiction of energy from someone who doesn’t have any – it very much does mean that the writing often connects…

I liked a lot of it.

Some excerpts and comments follow below:

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“Across the room from each other, / the spices still on our lips” (p. 4)

I liked that, its idea of desire and consumption, its distance and its inevitability… Not describing a kiss or the instant before it, but a kiss sure to come…

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“who I was once shackled to and who I thought would be his own medicine for me” (p. 8)

Shackle is a good verb, always a good verb.

Love and romance as medicinal, as curative… It’s good to see that there are younger people still living and writing like love is a creator and possessor of hope, rather than having been prematurely dulled to cynicism by the over-algorithmic anti-romance of the dating apps that they all seem to hate but seem to be unable to delete…

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“I remark that we are both old, forty, encyclopaedic. Perhaps it is time to close up tent, what gets better past forty?” (p. 10)

Ahhh, this too is a moment of youth, not so much for thinking that forty is old, but for thinking that people who are forty think forty is old.

I always thought I’d be dead by forty* but it’s now not too far away in my future and the reason for that is that I fundamentally do, I do I do I do I do, think that everything is going to get better after forty.

And I think most forty year olds think similarly, though not for the same reasons as me. You have to believe in the future to live in the present. And you have to have a tolerable present to be able to believe in a better future, innit

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“Romance is one thing but romance for most people is too easy and in our age of inward snideness most people do not desire true romance. What gives real value is loneliness or separation.” (p. 12)

There’s something about this that echoes… I love the phrase “inward snideness” in its combination of sounds, though I don’t know if I necessarily agree with the sentiment (are people snider now than before?)…

A sense that solitude holds value is important, too, and though I think one must, one has to, connect with others, there very much is a sense [in our society] that who and what one is is something that only comes from internal knowledge…

How true is it? I dunno… I’m someone who often chooses to be alone (or at least I have been historically, I don’t know how much alone time outside of commutes to work (which really, really, really don’t count) I’m going to get for the next decade and a half or so now I have a child (Whamathan, who I love)) and I have always felt better in those moments, especially when younger and I didn’t really have anyone in my life I liked more than no one. Ahhhh.

I suppose, then, it’s not loneliness that I personally see as useful, but solitude.

I rarely feel lonely, and historically, when I felt that a lot, it was never while I was on my own…

For me, at least, feeling lonely is absolutely not something that comes from being alone.

Separation is only something to yearn for when your personal circumstances keep you locked, yoked, proximate to, people you know you must avoid…

A crowd can be the loneliest place.

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“Life is spat in thick and vulgar / breaths of mucus and sperm and rigid sex / where spines break.” (p. 20)

I just liked this a lot.

Great, high energy, physical, corporeal, bodily, writing.

That use of the word “breaths” I love, that “mucus and sperm”, that “thick and vulgar”, that brittle, sharp, dagger-like snap at the end. Yes!

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“I wait around for bladder to fill, / wait around for good times.” (p. 21)

Imo this is a great, simple, image about the emptiness of passing time with neither melancholy nor sadness. I like a lot, too!

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“All art is in the graveyard, middle class homes.” (p. 24)

A pro-museum stance, a pro-art stance.

Middle class homes are worse than graveyards, because at least in graveyards it’s acceptable to emote.

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“amphetamine to sleep” (p. 31)

There are two references in the book to amphetamines and the first one (which I didn’t jot down) also sounded somewhat off and this second mention clarifies why: the poet hasn’t understood the effects of the drug. (Upper)

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“drugged oiks” (p. 37)

And this little phrase here clarifies the “why” to the above and also places Miller a little more in the middle class graveyard than perhaps they are comfortable with.

“oik”, for those of you who don’t know it, is basically a classist English slang word for working class person. The word that “chav” superseded, essentially. Associating druggedness with classlessness, with impropriety, with judgement, too, is very much an English act, an middle class one…

Ha ha ha

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I liked it as a collection, I did, and I’ll absolutely be picking up another chapbook from the set at some point soon!

Ya, thank you!

Youth, energy, bang.

*_ Unfortunately the odds generated by my mental health diagnoses still think me getting there is borderline, but we’ll see…