A whorling pseudotranslation of French Symbolist Saint-Pol-Roux’s La Repoetique, The Repoetic: After Saint-Pol-Roux is a herniating long-poem, a w(h)orld built by and for the word. Unconventional and otherwise inconceivable relationships thrive in this unreal space, where hot tub (s)cum, The Tinder-Poem, comes to life to date a mercurial living-meme, the Chose-Coke Poser: sometimes Goblin, sometimes aristocratic variant of the Femboy Hooters meme. The whorld at once a food-tray fastness, a clotted pocket mirror propping open a mouth, and a bloody buffet for twenty befanged criminals seeking refuge from the law. Whorld as ever-unrolling unraveling rug; as yawnsense; as slimey timey oneness; as aerated English, Nu-Cue-Ler Alberta English, used-to-be-the-bottom-of-an-Ocean English, as the trembling timbre of the Tinder-Poem’s voice asking “does your English always fight like this, or just at the holidays?” The Repoetic is the realm of the loser, the cruiser, and the havering grief that an immortal Mother asks of us. Sieve for the unreal, forgotten, and trampled, for Lady Di and Dido and Bart Simpson’s unending boyhood. The cerebral, no-chill, scab-picking, contours flush to contours queertopia, the nemesis to cartopia, straight-time and straight-rhyme alike. The Res Poetica a long-overdue middle-finger to Plato’s no-poet Res Publica. And though no panacea nor samizdat, The Repoetic’s an annihilating solvent; the joke-rupt-by-hiccup haghounding its way into existence twixt split sycamore Pocky sticks; the stretched elastic embouchure of the things we wish we could say yet can’t couch-twirl thru the threshold. The Repoetic a singu(hi)larity, the Poem a noise the Poem annoys.

Benjamin C. Dugdale is a poet & experimental filmmaker currently living in Rural Alberta (Treaty 7 Territory). B’s writing can be found in places like GEIST, Plentiude, Riddle Fence, giallo, fillingStation, &c., and their films have screened across the globe at festivals such as Sick’N’Wrong, VideoDrunk, GottaMinute, Bideodromo, and London Experimental. B also reads for PANK and ARC Poetry, and sometimes publishes as bonny CD. Their updates can be found at benjamindugdale.ca. Their debut chapbook, Saint Rat O’Sphere’s Formica Canticle Poems, was published in 2020 by Anstruther Press, and their most-recently completed experimental film project, Contents Under Pressure, is distributed by the CFMDC. The Repoetic: After Saint-Pol-Roux is their debut full length poetry collection.

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