David Rushmer

        body of work

"Literature is going toward itself, toward its essence, which is disappearance"

Maurice Blanchot

"Everything takes place in a fiery penumbra, its meaning subtly withdrawn"

Georges Bataille

"what took you too out of

language with a gesture

that you let happen like

the dance of two words of just

autumn and silk and nothingness"

​ Paul Celan

"Tao called Tao is not Tao"

Lao Tzu

David Rushmer's first full length collection of poetry, Remains to Be Seen was pubished by Shearsman in May 2018. (full contents at the bottom of this page).

https://www.shearsman.com/store/-p102839087

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In David Rushmer’s stunning book, Remains to Be Seen, we find a carefully crafted rendering of a voice in the world, each syllable of this drama earned. There is a microtonal attention to reality and a gorgeous music throughout. This is a truly remarkable first book.

• Peter Gizzi

David Rushmer’s poetry can come as a shock. The power of the writing comes from a compelling manipulation of rhythmic devices combined with an insistence on a pared-down word-hoard constantly revisited.  It is intense. It has great scope. It has a primitive, elemental feel, with an attention to rhythmic and sonic detail.

Rushmer has acknowledged his debts to French writers such as Maurice Blanchot and Bernard Noël, and it is the case that his own work doesn’t seem to fit comfortably into any particular tradition of British writing. This, of course, is one of its great strengths, Rushmer is a European writer.

The title of the book is as deft as any of its contents in managing to hint at a devastated landscape consisting of nothing but remains, as well as a glimmer of hope in the other sense of the phrase ‘it remains to be seen.’ I have a high regard for this work. It is subtly crafted, deeply serious and disturbingly memorable.

• Peter Hughes

Performing 'Lost For Words' 2012

photograph by Wang Bang

Biography

David Rushmer was born in the UK in 1965, and spent his early years in rural Essex. He studied Photography and Art & Psychology at the University of East London in the early 1990s, and since 2003, has worked at the English Faculty Library, University of Cambridge.

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From 1989-1991 he edited pen:umbra magazine, which had a strong preference for writings influenced by modern and contemporary French poetics, and has published over 300 poems in pamphlets and poetry journals including; Amusements, Angel Exhaust, Archive of the Now, Athena Incognito (USA), BlazeVOX (USA), Desiree (France), Epizootics, E.ratio (USA), Exile, Filament, Fire, First Offense, Fractured, Fuel (USA), Great Works, Global Village Voice, Haiku Quarterly, Horizon Review, Human Repair Kit, Insects, Intimacy, Krax, Le Miracle Tatoue (France), Long News: In The Short Century (USA), Mar, Memes, Molly Bloom, Moria (USA) Oasis, Otata (USA), Otoliths (Australia), OxMag, pen:umbra, Sein und Werden, Shearsman, Spine, Spirit (USA), Starfish, Talus, This Corner, Tremblestone, 10th Muse, Xu Zhimo Poetry Festival 2015, Yule Log.

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and the following anthologies;

2 poems included in Verbi Visi Voco – Anthology of Concrete Poetry

 (edited by Bob Cobbing and Bill Griffiths, Writers Forum, 1997)

1 poem included in In Blossoms atop Reeds it Flares (edited by Chris Brownsword, Broken Compass Press: Sheffield, 2006)

2 poems included in Sea Pie: a Shearsman Anthology of Oystercatcher Poetry (edited by Peter Hughes, Shearsman, 2012)

1 poem included in The Art of Typewriting (by Marvin Sackner, Ruth Sackner, and Steven Heller, Thames and Hudson, 2015)

1 poem included in Face Down in the Book of Revelations: for Peter Hughes on his 60th birthday (edited by Lynn Hughes, Oystercatcher Press, 2016)

Review of Remains to Be Seen by Clark Allison

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Review of Remains to Be Seen by Ian Brinton

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Review of Remains to Be Seen by Alan Baker

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Recordings

Online recordings of the poet reading his work can be found at Archive of The Now (link below)

Works online

​Archive of the Now -

1 poem: Writing (writing/a place I go).

Readings of 14 poems.

Angel Exhaust no.16 January 1999 -

3 poems; The Oracle Bone, Locus Amorphous, Untitled.

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BlazeVOX 16, Spring 2016 -

3 poems; Grave Air, The Event Horizon, Substance.

BlazeVOX 17, Fall 2017 -

2 poems; Erased Matter, Forming Principles.

BlazeVOX 19, Spring 2019 - http://www.blazevox.org/BX%20Covers/BXspring19/David%20Rushmer%20-%20Spring19.pdf

1 poem; Still Time.

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​Epizootics Issue 1, November 2016 -

1 poem: This Body.

Epizootics Issue 2, August 2017 -

4 photographs: 1, 2, Tombstone, What Space Between Us.

Epizootics Issue 3, December 2019 - https://epizooticszine.wordpress.com/2019/12/09/issue-3-launch/

2 poems: Where We Vanish To, What Matters.

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E.ratio 11 2008 -

2 poems: Hidden by Leaves, Written Off.

E.ratio 12 2009 -

2 poems: A Blooming, Lance'd.

E. ratio 14 2011 -

1 poem: Waiting to Happen.

E.ratio 19 2014 -

1 poem: Holding Your Breath (for Wang Bang).

E.ratio 21 2015 -

1 poem: Shell.

E.ratio 25 2018 -

1 poem: Returning Breath.

E.ratio29 2020 - http://eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue29_Rushmer.html

2 poems: When Night Fell, Night Flowered (from 'Depth Charge').

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Great Works -

5 poems: Ghosts After Music, I Was Dead, A Lace of Shadows (for D H), Utterly, Threads.

Great Works -

3 poems: The Disappeared, The Stream, The Passage.

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Human Repair Kit - 

3 poems: Depth Charge, Wounds, The Gesture

5 collages: Forming Petrification, Night-Blooming Rose, Spine Suture, Skin Graft, Increase of Gravity

Human Repair Kit 2 - 

2 poems: The Radiance, Dictate

Human Repair Kit 3 - https://www.hrkzine.com/david-rushmer-3

1 poem: Particles and Atoms

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Molly Bloom 5 2015 - 

3 poems: No Matter, The Casualties, The Radiance.

Molly Bloom 8 2015 -

2 poems: The Parallels, Surface Memory.

Molly Bloom 15 2018 -

3 poems: The Wake, A Matter of Memory, The Death Sensations.

Molly Bloom 19 2019 - https://mollybloompoetry.weebly.com/david-rushmer.html

2 poems: Darkening, Lightforce.

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Moria volume 1, issue 9, 2006 -

3 poems: Remains to Be Seen, Sound Asleep, A Journey Through the Body.

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Otata 46, October 2019 - https://otatablog.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/post-otata-46-october-2019.pdf

6 poems: from 'Rote' - Writing XXII (flower sleeping), Writing XXXIII (wrote), Writing XXXIV (speak of me), Writing XXXVII (what is their form), A Matter of Silence, "...one closes the eyes of the dead...

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Otoliths February 2018 -

1 poem: The Filament's Heat.

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OxMag Issue 38, Summer 2016 -

1 poem, 2 paintings: The Mother, Blue Horizon, Enso 1.

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Sein und Werden Autumn 2016 -

1 poem, 2 photographs: A Blood Duet, Spine Tree, Night Tree (Praying Mantis).

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10th Muse no.13 2004 -

3 poems: The Hostage (after Blanchot), Yawn of Ecstacy, The Mirror Cancels Her offspring.

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This Corner Pink Issue -

1 poem: Utterly III.

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The Other - photograph by David Rushmer 1994

Contact - dar43atcam.ac.uk