CW: Suicidal ideation, self-harm, sex/death psychodynamics, but the journey moves from such darkness into radiant, transformative light! “and the glints on waves / are not glints on waves, but... / stars...” In summer 2010, artist and poet Bruce Rimell fell into a self-destructive spiral of suicidal ideation, confused hyperactivity, and dark dreams so unsettling and so persistent that they threatened to tear his life apart. The most prominent recurring nightmare was one in which he hanged himself and enjoyed it, eager to end his life, but at the last moment he would spit out letters, so did not die. Waking up terrified, he felt himself coming undone, desperately seeking answers but finding none. When he began to 'enter into the image' of this dream, rather than study it rationally, a new and unexpected transformative path opened up towards a more holistic Queer spiritual identity. This in turn kickstarted the healing of his latent self-destructive urges that arose from his internalised rage at centuries of homo/queerphobic persecution. 'Hangman Starman' is a visionary voyage through the darkest realms of Bruce's gay/queer psyche, a brutally honest account of his time in the underworld, and how he worked his dreams to burn his darkness through to the blazing light on the other side.
In the less than eight decades since Superman's debut in 1938, comic book superheroes have become an indispensable part of American society and the nation's dominant mythology. They represent America's hopes, dreams, fears, and needs. As a form of popular literature, superhero narratives have closely mirrored trends and events in the nation. This study views American history from 1938 to 2010 through the lens of superhero comics, revealing the spandex-clad guardians to be not only fictional characters but barometers of the place and time in which they reside. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.
A nameless young man finds himself wandering half-naked through the frozen wintry Bristol night, when he falls – or is he pushed…? – into the river and is washed out to sea. Arriving lost and exhausted upon a strange island enmisted, he comes to a fortress which holds a lithe, enchanted-but-broken, eternal youth in chains, who tries to kill him. It is only through sharing stories of his life that he is able to avert the youth's wrath at being disturbed, easing his traumatised heart by offering him something no other visitor to this dark place has ever given him: presence, and care. This unearthly mythical narrative becomes the poetic frame story by which Bruce, the nameless wanderer, unfolds his life story in fractured, allegorical and dreamlike ways. We move from migraines and his lived experience as a gay/queer person with ADHD, into visionary experiences that changed the course of his life, the ecstasies of true love, and expressions of his personal philosophies and spiritualities, as well as a curious catalogue of artworks he has created over the years as an artist. As this most unusual of autobiographies unfolds, we move deeper into Bruce's queer/neurodiverse, homoerotic/hyperactive inner world, gliding from one theme to another in a genre-baffling, lilting symphony of images, ultimately uncovering his one true mirror soul with all its fragilities, strengths and wonders. He must try to save his own life as well as the youth's, so they can escape this otherworldly prison together. At once melodious and magic, joyous and tragic, ‘Nine Nights Awake’ is not for the faint of heart: simultaneously riddlingly absurd, sexually graphic and brutally honest, its mythical wildness might well be the oddest and most eccentric memoir you are ever likely to read! ‘Nine Nights Awake’ is all at once, a kind of thematically arranged autobiography of an idiosyncratic inner life, with all its feelings, colours, dreams, armchair philosophies and psychological agilities; an epic poem grounded in fragments of Celtic and Germanic myth telling the story of a lost soul found; an ad-hoc set of narrative allegories from personal, gay/Queer, neurodiverse, contemporary and archetypal human life; an extensive artist’s talk enfolded into a dreaming fall and confinement; an intimate and winding conversation with the soul; a lengthy meditation upon the Medieval Welsh poem ‘Preiddeu Annwn’ attributed to Taliesin, which in turn liberates further personal musings on poetry itself; and a radically parallel series of multiple threads, sidenotes, sidetracks, circular narratives, premonitions, postmonitions and quirky references, misquotes, paraphrased song lyrics and other inspirations… all rolled into one!
In 2021, British artist Bruce Rimell realised that he had also been a poet for much longer than he had been an artist, and decided to bring this other creative practice into the foreground. Delving through his many collections of poetry, he began to publish the best as part of a small series of books. However, some of his unpublished collections were of much lower quality, yet contained within them what he felt were occasional shards of beautiful light. He decided to gather these disparate poems into a single volume of assorted works. This retrospective book is the result, mapping the transformations of Bruce's poetic voice over nearly thirty years, from formative and youthful compositions into the confident, eclectic, and eccentric poet with a mythical edge that he is now. The diverse collection ranges from satirical to magical, playful to visionary. Longform psychedelic texts sit alongside quick bursts of poetic inspiration, while poems which accompanied artworks, along with random social media compositions, all add their unique voices to the throng of the anthology. ‘Reveries, Dreams, Refractions’ is an unconventional volume charting a course across decades of a poet's inner life. Come and see...!
What do you do when life seems overwhelming, the world seems alienating and physical injury has become debilitating? For artist and poet Bruce Rimell, the answer was to turn away from the world, and to seek solace in landscape, astronomy and poetry. Written over a period of four years, ‘Wanderer: Songs of Solitude, Fragility, and Change’ emerged from this challenging time: the poetry addresses grief and memory, as well as slow-burn changes in the course of a human life. It mourns the passing of a once-cherished friendship, stands in sorrow before waterfalls, celebrates the passing of the seasons visible in the natural world. Framed as a journey across the heavens, the collection is interspersed with deeply personal, and idiosyncratic, hymns to various planets and stars, before returning home to Earth. ‘Wanderer…’ takes in diverse shifts in identity and lifelong movements through walks in moorlands and the wilds, as well as dreams, otherworldly encounters at secluded falls, and the night sky, all sprung from a somewhat hyperactive perspective. A free verse diary of some dark and difficult days punctuated with shards of light, ‘Wanderer’ takes the reader through a time of lost illusions, but a magical journey nonetheless. Sometimes, sorrow is as beautiful as joy: this collection seeks out exactly that kind of beauty.
Iceland is often labelled ‘a land of ice and fire’ – these days it has become something of a cliché – but when artist and poet Bruce Rimell visited with his husband in 2023, he felt plunged into a world of blood and honey, a place of poetry and song, recalling the Old Norse mythic images, as well as the magma which underlies and sculpts the vistas of this volcanic country… “to which I will say: I am a poet, I pray to waterfalls, let it outpour like rain…” Simultaneously a journey through Iceland’s natural, cultural and human landscapes, as well as a dreaming fall into the frenetic soul of a hyperactive poet, ‘Bloodhoney Songs’ takes in scenes from Reykjavik, ekphrastic verses springing from Icelandic music – from Björk to múm, Sigur Rόs to Ólafur Arnalds – and geological wonders, to evoke a sublime process of emergence from lifelong traumas as a Queer/ADHD person into a more hopeful place… “breathe out: you are coming to an end of your grief, a closing of time…” Moving from the waking world, through fractured dreams of love in Loki’s arms, into an eternal moment of stillness – the beginning of a fragile new world – this unique outsider’s view of Iceland is possibly the most unusual perspective on the country and its fascinating people you’ve ever read!
“…everyone’s got something to say with your mouth, even me…” A hyperactive, idiosyncratic and deeply personal journey into the mercurial Welsh poet-prophet figure of Taliesin, framed as a magical pilgrimage around Llyn Geirionydd in North Wales, evoking the lake and its waters as the bard’s own cauldron from which he continually emerges in different historical, mythical and fictional guises… “sometimes dreams are wiser than the waking…” Unfolding layers of meaning from the protohistorical cynfardd of the Old North to the ‘radiant brow’ of medieval legend, as well as Taliesin’s contemporary significance and links with other cultures, this crazed, garrulous exploration runs through the archetypal Celtic poet’s hall of mirrors with eccentric wit and blazing energy… “stand behind the cataract unbound, close my eyes: hear me, I speak...” Culminating in a wildly subjective, underwater encounter with Taloiastinos and the watis, two timeless and interrelated forerunners of the Taliesin mythos, and a forested fall into the mindset of the visionary poet who experiences no separation between self and other, this book is likely to be one of the most riddling, esoteric and obscure treatments of Taliesin ever released! “I am one who waits, says, I am one who watches, says, I am one who wanders off away, says…”
A dark, brutally honest, and sometimes sordid voyage, written with a wired, savage voice, into the promiscuous heart of a gay/Queer and hyperactive/ADHD outsider who has internalised a world of pain, but still finds himself, standing, still surviving... "don’t freak if this all goes horribly wrong: it’s fine…" Trigger warnings run their gauntlets everywhere, but there are moments of beauty and sorrow, which is beauty in another guise... "don’t see my eagerness, my tears, or if my eyes blank: it’s fine…" Not for the faint-hearted perhaps, this collection jumps frenetically from elegiac tributes for queer heroes to self-destructive sexual acts in a kind of shadowy no-place and no-time, confronting casual encounters, abuse and queerphobic hate towards a poetic self attempting to act as an antenna for Queer suffering everywhere... "don’t stop: I’ll be your willing sacrifice…"
In the late 1990s, artist and poet Bruce Rimell travelled halfway across the world to live and work in Japan. There in his new home city of Uji, just south of Kyoto, he discovered a wonderful new world of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, as well as evocative myths and folktales, beautiful rivers and forested mountains. Losing himself in this ancient landscape, where the Uji River emerges from the mountains into a picturesque cultural scene, he soon discovered the traditional Japanese artform of the 短歌 tanka, the ‘short song’ arranged in five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables, and he began writing these brief poems to reflect upon his emotional life, and to note his personal impressions of the historical region in which he lived. After two years in the country, he decided to return home to Britain, initiating a transformative period in his life. The 短歌 tanka struck him as an appropriate way to record these changes, particularly as the medium commonly evokes traditional Japanese cultural ideas of impermanence, transience and the fleeting nature of moments in time. As he departed from Japan, and settled back slowly into British life, sorrows of a life left behind, impressions of natural beauty, and failed love affairs, are all enfolded into a collection of poems – in Japanese, but with English translations and notes – that represents an emotionally sensitive work of memory, of reminiscence, and of もののあわれ mono no aware, the ‘sigh of things’, the delicate knowledge that everything in this fleeting, floating world eventually fades and passes away.
In summer 2022, poet and artist Bruce Rimell visited the Coasts of Antrim, Northern Ireland. After a lifetime reading Irish mythology, and wandering that ancient landscape in his mind for years, this was the first time he had set foot on the physical island itself. Unsurprisingly, his imagination caught fire, and ‘Beeley far The North’ is the result. Framed as a picaresque jaunt around the region of Ballycastle, taking in notable legends and landmarks from around the town as well as Rathlin Island, this eccentric narrative poem takes as its primary inspiration the Middle Irish tale ‘Buile Suibhne’, or, in Seamus Heaney’s translation ‘Sweeney Astray’. Rather than retell this tragic story of this frenzied and cursed figure, half wildman half broken bird, through a different perspective, however, Bruce chose to take poor Suibhne’s madness as a character to inhabit, eyes through which to experience this part of Ireland in a madcap way which mirrored the rapid “seven days, eight nights” of his sojourn there. In doing this, he has also tentatively begun to forge something of a new, unconventional, and hopefully unique, approach to psychogeography, which he has playfully termed the beeley. Oddly unorthodox but always vibrant in tone, ‘Beeley Far The North’ is an experiment in trying to speak of the human dynamics of landscape in a fresh and hyperactive way.
