4 Severed Head Songs: New Poems at The Brazen Head

Many thanks to Liam Guilar, poetry editor at The Brazen Head, who just published four poems of mine. You can read them here.

As my note to the poems says, they come from my much-longer upcoming book, The Great Year, and the poems are spoken by a preserved severed head, named John, hence their ecstatic/puzzling nature. This is also the longest selection of poetry from The Great Year to yet appear, and easily the longest rhyming poems of mine to appear anywhere.

Here is my note to the poems:

The Great Year takes place a few centuries from now as a handful of people journey from eastern Europe to Iceland after the world has been decimated by war and environmental collapse. As they go, and in the manner of a post-apocalyptic Canterbury Tales, the survivors take turns telling stories. One of these survivors is a severed and magically-preserved head named John who occasionally recites poetry of his own. His first two songs are gnomic and ecstatic and don’t need any context.  The third narrates how he met another survivor, a man named Smith (also his occupation). The fourth song, coming near the end of the book, describes John’s affection for his friends that he has traveled with for so long.