Instant-flex 718

By Heather Phillipson

Issuing from the body-mind's grisly interwedge, Heather Phillipson's poems are a protest against well-stitched seams, an off-loading of intellectual baggage, a shout from the deep-ish channels of fear. Phillipson's much anticipated debut collection, Instant-flex 718 is an operati of reactivation. Splicing the leftovers of culture with spurious monologues discharged from an arrhythmic right ventricle or a mouth filled with half-chewed peanuts, the poems unpick and destabilise. The poet is a plasterer, entering the spits and drips with urgency. An internationally exhibiting artist, Phillipson has an impertinence and dynamism incomparably her own. Her poems observe the ordinary world stagger. 'For all the playfulness in Instant-flex 718, it also addresses the weighty issues -mortality, the relationship between mind and body, the extinction of species, religion -and its lively combination of intelligence, verve and humour makes it a debut that is both unusually accomplished and unusually pleasurable to read' - Carrie Etter, Guardian. 'Instant-flex 718 is an explosive first collection from a poet and artist who thrills and disconcerts in equal measures. Heather Phillipson's poems fuse subterranean erotic landscapes with the complex pleasures of thought. They conduct a weird, addictive verbal electricity that can both jolt and elate. Handle with care: this book is not for those who like their poetry safely earthed' -Mark Ford. Shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Mar 27, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780370897

Heather Phillipson

Heather Phillipson has published four volumes of poetry, including two full-length collections with Bloodaxe: Instant-flex 718 (2013), which was shortlisted for the 2013 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, and Whip-hot & Grippy (2019). She received an Eric Gregory Award in 2008, a Faber New Poets Award in 2009, was named a Next Generation Poet in 2014, and received Poetry magazine’s Friends of Literature Prize in 2016. She is also an award-winning artist, working across video, sculpture, environments, drawing, music and web projects. Solo projects include the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in 2020, recent exhibitions at Whitechapel Gallery London, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Frieze Projects New York and BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, and major commissions for the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Art on the Underground’s flagship site at Gloucester Road station, London. She received the Film London Jarman Award 2016 and the European Short Film Award selection from the International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2018.

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