This new collection brings together a mix of montaged and strangely juxtaposed materials composed over a period of several years between 2012 and 2017 and continues a tradition whereby images and ideas create a framework which contains some familiar and not so familiar topics and relationships. You may recognise phrases and snippets which cause a sense of déjà vu but not that you'd be certain enough to nail down. Weather becomes political and there is resonance here in abundance.
"Spence's pirate poetics combine the best of nautical history with some freely plundered contemporary processes to produce gold aplenty..."
-Rupert Loydell on A Curious Shipwreck (Shearsman Books, 2010),
shortlisted for the Forward Prize best debut collection
"This is a ship steered by Werner Herzog and captained by Klaus Kinski."
-Fred Johnston, Tears in the Fence, on A Curious Shipwreck
"Limits of Control (Penned in the Margins, 2011) is a collection of prose poems and about 75% of its lines are killers."
-Martin Stannard, Stride Magazine
"Subtly prismatic, these fractured images float joyously free from the whorl on the page."
- Peter Gillies, Stride Magazine, on Maelstrom Origami
(Shearsman Books, 2014)
"Steve Spence has reframed noise pollution for the connoisseur."
-Patrick Holden on Many Red Fish (Knives Forks and Spoons, 2019)
