Zombie Love

Time for a quick update on the old journal front. Over the weekend I visited Plymouth to attend and perform at Plymouth University’s fantastic, Zombie Symposium. I had such a lovely time. The event took place over 2 days and I only wish we could have gotten to more.

Highlights included such wonders as, Wireless Zombies, a live theatre radio broadcast, in 1940’s style, of a zombie love/horror story (Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries)- and a range of deeply engaging presentations, raising everything from gender and (undead)pregnancy, in all senses – to disability, new technologies and needless to say, the other. I met a local Plymouth audience member who was a free man of Leicester, and ate cupcakes with iced intestines.

For more info on the extract/abstract I shared, see here

Below is one of the pieces from it – thanks to Scott Bridgwood for the accompanying visuals – and to Dave Dhonau (https://soundcloud.com/davedhonau), for the corresponding track.

Zombie Dub.

I saw it on a billboard.
Read it in the news.
Heard it on the airwaves
going for a cruise.

Fresco-scape of Botticelli.
Liquid sea of serum ads.
An army of painted inheritors of everything;
corseted, jacketed and chemically enhanced.

Nanotechnology and seaweed extract
penetrate, plump and preserve the skin.
Fill a bath with ice cold water
then sit in it, till you forget to eat.

When Kylie Minogue is Aphrodite
and Primark is selling the budget range

When there’s botox on Oprah
and airbrush pollution
is Zombification the final stage?

Read it on a billboard.
Saw it in the news.
Heard it on the airwaves
going for a cruise.

Photo film is made of collagen.
Paralysis available on the street.
Dermabrade your epidermis.
Render your forehead impossible to speak.

Shave your shins, remove a rib bone,
implant silicon in your chin.
There’s a red faced woman in the evening,
sunglasses covering a surgeon’s ink.

When the easiest thing to learn how to copy
is the vacant look of lost without note.

When there’s Playboy in Tesco
and Page 3 undoes us
is Zombification the final point?

Heard it on a billboard,
Read it in the news,
saw it on the airwaves,
going for a cruise.

33 thousand
U.S women
would rather lose weight
than achieve any goal.

British ladies ask their doctors
for Joile’s mouth
and Natalie Portman’s
eyes and nose

When the face of perfection is made up of portions
of other peoples’ parts possessed.

When there’s Barbie for babies
and plastic solutions
is Zombification the next step?

Saw it on a billboard.
Heard it on the news.
Read it in the airwaves
going for a cruise.

Make me immortal
as long as I eat.
With an appetite for life
I’ll be walking down the street.

Atrophy my follicles, withdraw my hair
paint my navel to my neckline
electrocute my imperfections
slice my skin and suck with air.

When bruising and numbness
are considered quite usual.

When women’s magazines
are almanacks of persecution.

When there’s Playboy in Tesco
and airbrush pollution

and rape
and violence
and prostitution.

When the face of perfection’s
a substitution.

Is zombification the final solution?
Is zombification the final solution?
Is zombification, the last defence?

Image: Benini’s lover, on newspaper (Scott Bridgwood)