Machine Journey is a pamphlet of prose poems and flash fictions. Travel the road from Slough to Mars. Discover wild visions, strange tales and machine futures. Scramble your way to the perfect swimming stroke. Doyle leads us through museums, galleries and cobbled towns with a touch of Science Fiction and dark
Machine Journey is an eclectic mix of poetry and prose, snapshots of thoughts and musings on a variety of topics. The collection begins with a fantastic poem fusing poetry and fiction inspired by works of Robert Frost and Malcolm Lowry conjuring the Day of the Dead and suggests of Armageddon. It’s an impactful piece that is a perfect opener and stays with you throughout the compilation.
Of course I had my favourites. The Writer was an evocative suggestion of the writer’s self perception of his craft.
‘ ……..a trickster shuffling packs of tragic deaths and heroic entrances; my songs delicate cascades of humour falling on deaf ears. Where are my epiphanies? My poems?’
Accompanied by a litany of potential descriptions and synonyms for the humble writer. It is potent in its simplicity.
Perhaps it is my own abortive effort at authoring that attracted me to Mr Doyle’s pieces that examine the thoughts and ideas of the creative mind but I also enjoyed Scramblings very much.
‘ Shake the idea up, challenge its assumptions, appreciate its complexity for itself. Scramble the expectations of an ending. It will make all the difference.‘
But it wouldn’t do to focus too much on this topic. I loved Collision with a greenberg where Stevi, the lookout, fails in his duty to alert a potential collision. The piece played with words and turned them round - ‘stumblebee’ or creating new ones completely - ‘rundleboot’ . It’s a lovely juxtaposition of ideas, ‘ What in the hogheavy Sugarhoarder of Heaven did you think you were doing!’
There’s fantasy, sci-fi, spirituality, philosophy, all neatly assembled within this deceptive little pamphlet. I found most pieces benefited from being read aloud but no matter if that’s not possible it’s a perfect read to carry with you and dip in and out of when you have a free moment.
Thanks to Isabel Kenyon Author Services for a spot upon the blog tour.
About the Author:
Richard Doyle is an old-school SF fan who began writing seriously in 2001. He has a Diploma in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and collaborated on a book in 2006. He has had poems published in the UK poetry magazines Orbis and Sarasvati and is a regular member of the Bristol Stanza Poetry Group. His debut pamphlet "The death of the sentence" was published in 2020. Two of his poems appear in the Bristol Stanza pamphlet "The Weather Indoors" (2021).
Instagram handle: https://www.instagram.com/richard_doyle334
No comments:
Post a Comment