Mendoza is a
Northumbrian poet and researcher at Birkbeck University investigating identity
through poetic practice. Mendoza writes and performs under several personas,
most notably “Linus Slug: Insect Librarian”, “Elgar Funk” and “Elffish Jon”.
The poetry itself
references
Northumbrian history and culture, as well as insect folklore and mythology. It
engages with the act of remembering, and the ways in which memory alters
or defines the formation of individual, social, and cultural identities.
MendozaSlug is the founder of
ninerrors
poetry series, editor of FREAKLUNG poetry zine and co-editor/event
organizer at Stinky Bear Press: highly active, and to good effect, in the
thriving but often seemingly private world of avant-garde poetry. Their (and I
use the pronoun advisedly – how else can a range of personas be adequately
referred to?) reputation is extending beyond the dark undergrowth of the
avant-garde to reach and engage a wider audience, with appearances in recent
wide-ranging anthologies of what’s most exciting in current new poetry.
Identity, and its exploration and presentation, is a major
focus of Mendoza’s poetry. Identity as what? – as given (here is this body,
these memories, out of Northumbria as we happen) – and equally as constructed
& performed, as a series of masks, as a series of roles adopted with
different audiences. Does identity exist alone & solitary? Mendoza’s
poetry, and that of many of their peers, would strongly suggest that’s
meaningless – like the tree falling unobserved in the forest: nothing to be
said about it. A lot to say about the dance of language between and within
people. A lot to say about other ways of existing within this world than those
sold & fed to us – that’s where (for me) the force of the interest of the
insects lies, and, yes, MendozaSlug has really truly been an insect librarian.
The actuality of otherness, of insect identity, is what this poetry gives me,
in poems which are funny, mischievous, moving and highly original. Identity of
another, your identity, their identity, is always mysterious & different:
young born furred with open eyes
O magpie thief
your speechspeech
tongue is
cleft of lip and palate
the sequence frass
gazette ends. In it are insects and people, history & possible poems,
ways of talking about who you are, who you aren’t and who you might be, mulched
up and fertile (frass is the term for insect droppings & waste – vital to
maintain ecosystems – ‘tis only nature) . To quote Edmund Hardy (on another
poem):
Linus Slug gives us a new type of ambiguity
in poetry, a principle of the playful infinite in a pamphlet which moves
through a rich decay - of violence, disembodied news, the eyes of scorn - to
find the points from which switches, sexuality and delight can flourish against
and over. These points cluster, scurry and fly everywhere - as insect
familiars, as "Lay of the last poetic" - and later return into layers
of code at the point of disappearance, "I stole from J who stole / from H
who / stole from F in Rymans".
Mendoza is an intelligent and skilled performer: prepare to
be astonished, intrigued and delighted, and to recognise the life within these
language creations. A strong presence is made, engaging & unforgettable –
the person constructing/constructed by personas demonstrated, the vitality of
language upheld in flight.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Poetry
Much of Mendoza’s writing has been published in small,
fugitive editions, circulating within a community of other poets, making it
difficult to access for a more general reader. Most recent publications have
been POEM / ART / THREAT! (Stinky
Bear Press, 2013) and Inside My Head My
Dog's A Bear (Stinky Bear Press, 2012). The poetry can be read most easily
in some recent anthologies of the most interesting new poetry (the first two of
which certainly present it to a wide audience and in varied company):
edited by Nathan Hamilton, Dear World & Everyone in It: New Poetry
in the UK (Bloodaxe Books, 2013)
edited by Sasha Dugdale, Best British Poetry 2012 (Salt
Publications, 2013)
edited by Chris Goode, Better Than Language: An anthology of new
modernist poetries (Ganzfeld, 2011) (as Linus Slug)
ON THE INTERNET
Blog: ninerrors poetry series < http://ninerrors.blogspot.com > – (as
ninerrors; many “niners” [9 in various ways] poems, by Linus Slug, plus other
poets collaborating in enterprise)
Reviews
Labels: introduction, mendoza
