In Chelsey Minnis's new collection Bad Bad, she provides 69 Prefaces, it having been suggested to her that a preface would help readers to understand her work! They are part poems / part manifesto / part acerbic jibes at the poetry world. Here are a few of my favourites:

Preface 4

I can only write poetry that is like a tuba covered in blood...

No asylums, crackhouses, jails, hitchhiker's cars, ditches, or body dumps for me!

If I find a piece of rope...I must use it to tie myself to the bedposts...

If I find the pretty pink horse-pills etc.

This is not a mini-gun with which to shoot myself.

You can say many nasty things about poetry if you like...

But Chelsey understands what is expected of her!


Preface 13

When I write a poem it's like looking through a knothole into a velvet f*ckpad...

And it is like buttery sweetbreads spilled down the front of your dress...

It is like a gun held to the head of a poodle...

If I want to write any poems I will write them!


A poem that doesn't have any intellectual filler in it...

Like two blondes fighting on a roof...


Preface 25

If anyone should write a love poem, I should, but only for fancy...

I do not wish for you to think there will be no bloody bunny rabbits or smashed éclairs in it...

I know you will like it like a piggie...

I know you will not become feeble with boredom...

A poem is like a retractable ceiling so all the shitty doves can fly out...


Preface 30

Once I became a poet I could not be taught to be a poet...

It is like wearing a slit slip under a slit skirt...


Now I am careless of my statements...

And it feels good...like a champagne bidet...


I should not have poetry as a vanity and I should not have it as a career...


But I should have it!...like a doorknob covered with honey...


Preface 51

Here is a poem...and I like it like faux simplemindedness...

This is like a fishtank within a fishtank...

This is a booklette...


It feels like eating meat-eating flowers...


And it is the most disenchanting thing except for temperance...


Preface 61

I can never predict what will disinterest me...

But it is often poetry or something brilliant...


This is like losing your fur wrap on a pleasure cruise...

Or the sound of a music box coming from a grave...


Writing a poem is like having your own way for too long...

I presume 69 was deliberate, rather than accidental. :D