Issue 105 / November 2019

ARTISTIC
LICENCE
This month’s offering is a selection of writings and artefacts taken from The Casserole Of Nonsense, a new
book pulled from the bubbling mind stew of Lewy Dohren and Jack Turner.
If you had to describe your style in a sentence, what would you
say?
A reaction to the plight of new age confusion, caked inside an
embryo of semi-hysterical tripe.
It’s fair to say that poetry isn’t your primary creative outlet.
When and why did you start writing for The Casserole Of
Nonsense?
Lewy: It had probably been festering inside our minds for years
without realising. But I had started writing some stuff while I was
in Berlin, just as a reaction to the confusing hilarity of modern life. I
was telling Jack about it at this fezzy, and while we were there we
started writing down some of the shite we were coming out with.
Jack: Yeh, something defo got switched on at that fezzy.
Almost as if our collective mental pen drives got hooked up to a
mainframe of ridiculousness, and both of us pressed ‘download’
at the same time. Not to plagiarise MLK but I also had a dream
about it.
Can you pinpoint a moment or a piece of writing that initially
inspired you?
L: I remember reading Caravan by Nick Power on a train journey
in the cold depths of winter, during the crescendo of sensory
bombardment that is Christmas. And I thought it was amazing
(the book, not the bombardment). That got the inspiration cogs
nice and oily, I reckon. I should probably say thanks to him here as
well, because he offered us some good advice in the early stages
of the project. Tar lid!
J: We’ve been spewing up nonsense butties ever since we met
many moons ago, but it was when he told me he’d started writing
stuff down in Berlin, that’s when I thought, ‘OK, maybe we should
try and get something down together and see where it takes us’.
Where does the inspiration come from for your work? Are
there any particular influences (everyday life, the outside
world, other art, people, society, politics, etc.)?
L: Probably just an amalgamation of years of confusing existence
and the monotonous struggle of day-to-day life. Mushing
together the generic boring things we all encounter with a packet
of cold hard insanity.
J: Dreams, nightmares, supermarkets, TV, GFs, current-eff-airs,
mates, pets, pubs, clubs, whatever’s left in the bottom of the
tea cup and a large dollop of the social medication we’re all
unflinchingly prescribed to.
If you could read at any event, work with any artist, or be
published anywhere, what would you choose?
Behind the bins at the Mecca Bingo in Birkenhead with Derek
Acorah, published in the Bible’s Ultra-New Testament.
Sound and rhythm are key to the emotional punch of The
Casserole Of Nonsense. Why do you think that slang and
vernacular speech works so well with your message?
L: Maybe because it feels like you’re in there actually swimming in
the pond of our fragile minds or something. Part of the confusing
world we’ve created for yer.
J: A lot of the poems and stories in here are written in the same
way they’d be spoken. The localised references comprised within
that would be impossible to avoid having lived on both the upper
and lower lips of the Mersey for pretty much all of our lives.
Why The Casserole Of Nonsense?
L: The name, or why are we even bothering to do this? The name
came in a dream and the rest, well, we’ll wait and see if it’s all
gonna be part of that same dream…
J: Who knows, someone could very easily just tap us both on
the shoulder… and there we are both standing in the middle of
that sweltering summer festival. Dazed, confused, bareback and
speechless to the fact that none of this has ever even happened.
Loser
An Ode To A Bifter
A Clean Sweep
-
-
I lost the nerve
And lost the receipt
I lost the number
And the street
I lost the tickets
And all the money
I think I’ve lost the beak
And my sunnies
I’ve lost my card
And my jacket
I lost the plot
Cus I thought you had it
But one thing I haven’t lost
That I didn’t mean to find
Is you.
Oh fuck where’ve yer gone…
Lewy Dohren, September 2018
Your silky sweet and sultry scent
Has in my heart now left a dent
A dent for all those times we shared
A toast to all lost eyebrow hairs
I’ll take with me these yellow teeth
Laid round my mouth, a stale wreath
Commemorate the biffs I’ve lost
Whilst balking at the total cost
And so to you I bid farewell
Tears in my eyes now start to swell
The plaster’s on, I can’t look back
A smoky curtain fades to black
Jack Turner, August 2018
There it was
A warp of time
A pool of self excrement
5 past nineteen ninety nine
Containers of excitement
Swamps on the Wirral line
Contract with the sphincter
Read and then sign
Sunshine and sins
And the start of a new deal
Good meaty hands
Keep them behind the wheel
Tape player’s wrecked
And we’ve broken the seal
It’s been 48 weeks
Since we called in that meal
A long forgotten pop star
Picking chewy off his toes
A sly fart from nostalgia
And I’m selling Matalan clothes
Stuck behind the tills
Getting necked by a rose
Is this still my birthday?
Fuck, nobody knows
Memory lane asylum
Wheelie bins of thoughts
A lifetime in the cloakroom
Wanking over Sunday sports
Sniffing loadsa fentanyl
With Sooty, Sweep and Paul
I’ve got it all on VHS
And in my school reports
Lewy Dohren & Jack Turner, March 2019
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