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Visceral: The Poetry of Blood

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Visceral: The Poetry of Blood
First edition
AuthorRJ Arkhipov
LanguageEnglish
GenrePoetry
PublisherZuleika
Publication date
14 June 2018
Publication placeUnited Kingdom
Media typeHardcover 4to
ISBN978-1-9996232-0-3

Visceral, full title Visceral: The Poetry of Blood, is a collection of poems by the Welsh poet RJ Arkhipov, first published by Zuleika on World Blood Donor Day in 2018 when Arkhipov was 26 years old.[1][2][3] A miscellany of verse, essays, and photographs, Visceral was Arkhipov's first published book and cemented his name as a poet.[4]

The first poems of the collection were written in 2015 and were controversial for having been written using the author's own blood as ink in protest of the MSM blood donor controversy in the United Kingdom.[5][6][7][8][9][10] In 2018, the renowned British sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley completed a portrait bust of the Welsh poet RJ Arkhipov. Arkhipov's experience with the sculptor inspired his poem, The Sculptor, which features among the poems in Visceral.[11] In June 2019, Visceral was long-listed for the Polari First Book Prize.[12][13][14][15][16] In November 2019, the French president Emmanuel Macron invited Arkhipov to the Élysée Palace to present his book to the library of the President of France and the First Lady of France.[6][17]

Form and content

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Noted by literary critics for its unorthodox hardback binding and quarto trim size,[4] Arkhipov himself described Visceral as 'a living, breathing, pulsing body of work through which the poetry of blood courses'.[18] The book is divided into six parts which the author describes as the work's 'organs' or 'viscera'. Each of the six chapters of Visceral contains four poems which are introduced by an essay outlining the chapter's theme and its connection with blood.[4]

Arkhipov chose a stanza from Pablo Neruda's poem La Palabra as the epigraph of Visceral. The book's foreword was written by the prominent sculptor Ian Rank-Broadley.[19]

Nació
la palabra en la sangre,
creció en el cuerpo oscuro, palpitando,
y voló con los labios y la boca.

Pablo Neruda, From "La Palabra", Plenos Poderes (1962).

Several of the poems within the book are examples of concrete poetry. In the erotic poem O, Arkhipov eschews the left-to-right writing system, opting instead to write the lines of the poem as a series concentric circles. The poem Perfect Lovers consists of two haiku, the lines of which are arranged as the hands of two adjacent clocks, mimicking an eponymous work of installation art by Félix González-Torres in which the artist placed two clocks side-by-side.[20] Other poems within the book are inspired by the constrained writing techniques of Oulipo.[18] For example, the poem A Nation's Ritual is an anagram poem written using only the letters in the naturalisation notice of the author's grandfather.[4]

Visceral is illustrated with photographs conceived by Arkhipov and captured by French photographer Maud Maillard.[2] The photographs were shot at Maxim's, a famous Art Nouveau restaurant in Paris founded in 1893. Described by a critic as 'mixing vaudevillian homoeroticism with the incongruously macabre', many of the book's photographs portray the author using his own blood as an artistic medium. In the dust jacket, the author is depicted 'shirtlessly re-enacting Alice in Wonderland', painting a spray of white roses red with his own blood.[4]

  • Abjection: Disturbance & Rejection
    • XY
    • Broken
    • The Offing
    • No Strings Attached
  • Ancestry: Belonging & Identity
    • Inside
    • Stargazing
    • A Nation's Ritual
    • Inheritance
  • Faith: Religion & Ritual
    • Baptism
    • Ceremony
    • Hide
    • Ineffable
  • Intimacy
    • Fingertips
    • O
    • Whiskey
    • The Moon Perfectly Halved
  • Mortality
    • Arthur
    • The Sculptor
    • Rough Seas
    • Perfect Lovers
  • Stigma
    • Inkwell
    • Afterwards
    • Vernacular
    • Beyond Blood
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References

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  1. ^ "I wrote a book of poetry in my own blood to protest unfair blood donor rules for gay men". inews.co.uk. 14 June 2018. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  2. ^ a b Damshenas, Sam (30 November 2018). "RJ ARKHIPOV". Gay Times Magazine.
  3. ^ Foundation, Thomson Reuters. "Blood donation policies unfairly stigmatise gay and bi men". news.trust.org. Retrieved 8 March 2020. {{cite web}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  4. ^ a b c d e "RJ Arkhipov's Visceral: The Poetry of Blood should be read and reread with the enthusiasm to produce paper cuts". PinkNews. 5 October 2018. Retrieved 17 March 2020.
  5. ^ "This man is writing poetry in his own blood to protest gay blood donations rules". PinkNews. 23 June 2017. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  6. ^ a b "Poet invited to present work at Elysee Palace in Paris by French President Macron". South Wales Argus. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  7. ^ "Welsh Poet RJ Arkhipov Works With His Own Blood to Protest Ban On Gay Donors". www.out.com. 25 September 2015. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  8. ^ "Gay poet writes in his own blood to protest donation ban". PinkNews. 30 July 2018. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  9. ^ "Visceral: The Poetry of Blood". Scottish Poetry Library. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  10. ^ "Polari on Sea – Back by Popular Demand". Hastings Independent Press. 7 September 2018. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  11. ^ "RJ Arkhipov". Ian Rank-Broadley. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  12. ^ "Newport poet is the only Welsh writer longlisted for prestigious Polari First Book Prize". South Wales Argus. Retrieved 8 March 2020.
  13. ^ "Gale, McMillan and Moss make Polari Prize longlists". The Bookseller. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  14. ^ "Andrew McMillan on longlist for Polari Prize – The Poetry Society". poetrysociety.org.uk. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  15. ^ "Sarah Moss among authors longlisted for Polari prize". belfasttelegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  16. ^ "UK's Polari Book Prize Announce 2019 Longlists for LGBT Literature". Publishing Perspectives. 10 June 2019. Retrieved 13 March 2020.
  17. ^ "Life after ULIP: RJ Arkhipov". University of London Institute in Paris. Retrieved 2 March 2020.
  18. ^ a b "Visceral: The Poetry of Blood". Scottish Poetry Library. Retrieved 17 March 2020.
  19. ^ Arkhipov, RJ (2018). Visceral: The Poetry of Blood. United Kingdom: Zuleika. ISBN 978-1-9996232-0-3.
  20. ^ ""Untitled" (Perfect Lovers), 1990 - Felix Gonzalez-Torres - WikiArt.org". www.wikiart.org. Retrieved 17 March 2020.
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