Marcus Slease : part one

Born in Portadown, Northern Ireland, Marcus Slease has made his home in Turkey, Poland, Italy, South Korea, the United States, Spain, and the United Kingdom – experiences that inform his surreal-absurd prose poetry. His writing has been translated into Danish and Polish and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, and Best of the Net. His stories, poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in various anthologies and magazines in Europe and North America, such as Tin House, DIAGRAM, Conduit, Fence, Poetry, New World Writing, The Lincoln Review, and Best British Poetry 2015. His latest book, Puppy, a chapbook of prose poems, is available from Beir Bua Press, his novel in microfictions, Never Mind the Beasts, is available from Dostoyevsky Wannabe and his book of surrealist prose poems, The Green Monk, is available from Boiler House Press. He is a bisexual writer from a working class background and currently teaches high school in Barcelona. Find out more at: Never Mind the Beasts and follow him on Twitter @postpran

What are you working on?

I am currently working on three manuscripts. I am doing a final revision (hopefully) of my second novel Hermit Kingdom. It is an experimental novel in its form (prose poems and microfictions). Half of it was written after moving to Spain in 2016 and the other half takes place during COVID lockdowns in the Barcelona area. A surreal-absurd novel. 

I am also working on two books of surreal-absurd prose poems: Smashing Time and Void & Quagmire. 

I have been working on those three books for the last six years or so. I think they should all be ready to send out to publishers very soon, but who knows.