David Rushmer
body of work
"Literature is going toward itself, toward its essence, which is disappearance"
- Maurice Blanchot
"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
"Everything takes place in a fiery penumbra, its meaning subtly withdrawn"
- Georges Bataille
"Tao called Tao is not Tao"
- Lao Tzu
“Emptiness, which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities"
- D. T. Suzuki
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.
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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.
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Peter Hughes
Performing 'Lost For Words' 2012
photograph by Wang Bang
Biography
David Rushmer was born in southern England 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 (USA), Insects, Intimacy, Krax, Le Miracle Tatoue (France), Long News: In The Short Century (USA), Mar, Memes, Molly Bloom, Moria (USA), Noon, 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
http://stridemagazine.blogspot.co.uk/2018/04/interior-spaces.html
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Review of Remains to Be Seen by Ian Brinton
https://tearsinthefence.com/tag/david-rushmer/
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Review of Remains to Be Seen by Alan Baker
http://www.leafepress.com/litter11/baker/baker.html
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Recordings
Online recordings of the poet reading his work can be found at Archive of The Now (link below)
Publications
Circles (1988)
Spine:Works (1989)
Absence (with David Barton) (1990)
Contents
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THE ABSENCE (Part 1)
THE ABSENCE (Part 2)
THE ABSENCE (Part 3)
THE ABSENCE The Voice
ABSENTEE (for David Barton)
ABSENCE, or "SUNLIGHT"
THE BODY: THE ABSENCE OF BREATHING
SPACE, SOUND, DESERT
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Ut-Trance (1990)
Tone Poems (1990)
Sand Writings (1991)
Contents
".........." (for Alice)
Haiku
Mirrors Reflecting Mirrors
Butterfly (for Alice) (or Rose Ouverte La Nuit, 2)
A Circle
Wank
Kisses of Dust
I am Happy, I am Sad (or After Cease to Exist)
(...death)
UNMASKING (3) (for 'The Doll' by Hans Bellmer)
Your Scent
A Ciel
Before Speech, Disperse the Shadow
(...rape me)
Tone Poem 64 (Breathing)
Breathing
24 pages (A5)
Private Pressing
Absence (with David Barton) (1990)
Contents
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THE ABSENCE (Part 1)
THE ABSENCE (Part 2)
THE ABSENCE (Part 3)
THE ABSENCE The Voice
ABSENTEE (for David Barton)
ABSENCE, or "SUNLIGHT"
THE BODY: THE ABSENCE OF BREATHING
SPACE, SOUND, DESERT
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artworks by David Barton
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80 pages (A5)
Published by David Barton, London
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Ut-Trance (1990)
Contents (concrete poetry)
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Tone Poems 127 to 139
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14 pages (A5)
Published by Writers Forum, London
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Homage to Throbbing Gristle (1993)
Contents (concrete poetry)
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Tone Poems 200 to 218
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Four of the poems are subtitled:
204 - Music for Hans Bellmer
210 - Music for Georges Bataille
211 - Music for Hans Bellmer 2 (Le Soleil Noir)
218 - Music for Georges Bataille 2
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20 pages (A5)
Published by Writers Forum, London
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The Family of Ghosts (2005)
Contents
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MOMENTARILY SPEAKING
THE ORIGIN
INTO THE FORGETTING
WHERE YOU SPOKE
THE HORIZON'S CORPSE
PANSPERMIA
"...one can only write
"...when there is nothing
WORDS THIRST FOR YOUR BODY
WRITING (building a corpse)
THE FAMILY OF GHOSTS
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cover painting by David Rushmer
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26 pages (A5)
Published by Arehouse, Cambridge
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Remains to Be Seen (2018)
Published May 2018. Paperback, 155pp,
9 x 6ins, £10.95 / $18.50
ISBN 9781848615823
Contents
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Remains to Be Seen (1990-2005)
Spoken Bodies
Locus Amorphous
The Oracle Bone
Untitled
The Voice of the Desert
The Hostage (after Blanchot)
Night Snow
Centrifugal, Centripetal
To Be a Dead Language (from a partial translation of ‘L’ete Langue Mort’ by Bernard Noel)
Remains to be Seen
Sound Asleep
The Punctuate
“…literature is going toward itself
A Lace of Shadows (for DH)
Where You Spoke
The Origin
Into the Forgetting
“…one can only write
Panspermia
Journey Through the Body
“…when there is nothing
Eclipsed
Sand Writings
Utterly (2008-2010)
Utterly
Utterly II
Utterly III
Utterly IV
Utterly V
From Tongue to Tongue
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Contents
SPINE,...(traces:
,...spine(obliteration
SPIN(E unborn:
IT IS, JUST,...(
UNITY SWORN TO STILLNESS
CIRCLE IN CONSTRICTION
FOR THIS INSTANT (pen:UMBRA)
SONIC DAWN
(SPINE:WORK)
;...spine/suture
;your mouth
"EMPTY:CENTRE"
"forgetting of myself...
"OPEN BOOKS" (part 2) (to the work of David Barton)
you are dark)
for The Doll (by Hans Bellmer)
:spine
FLESHANDBONEYE
28 pages (A5)
Private Pressing
(I don't seem to have a copy of Tone Poems, if anyone can find a copy, even a photocopy I would be very grateful - see contact details.) DR
Tone Poems (1990)
Contents (concrete poetry)
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Tone Poems
36 pages (A4)
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Published by Writers Forum, London
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Sand Writings (1991)
Contents
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Sand Writings 1-26
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(A6)
Published by ION Press 23, Glasgow
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Love Letters to the Dead (1993)
Contents
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TO ONE LONG DEAD
you are the skin of the nights embrace (for Bellmer)
THE NIGHT BLOOMING ROSE:HANS BELLMER
in the confirmation of embrace
to frame an emptiness
the gloominess of twilight
haloes of milk
HONEYSUCKLE NIGHTSHADE: EULOGY FOR HANS BELLMER
from the depths of your eyes
AT ONE WITH THE MOON
ANGEL OF MUD (for Don David)
a raised skirt
i cannot recognise you
in the open scream
your serenity your holiness
THE PERSISTANCE OF MEMORY
anus of night
FOR EMMA
THE WINDOW OF RAIN
milk her
a shock of stillness
ANGELIC CONSTITUTION
THE DARK BREEZE OF LOSS
AN AQUATIC SILENCE (for Emma)
infect the sun
the sky
THE GUARDIANS OF URINE
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cover photograph by Sigrun Gudbrandsdottir
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40 pages (A5)
​Published by La Petite Morte, Saffron Walden
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Blanchot's Ghost (2008)
Contents
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THE DISAPPEARED
THE STREAM
THE PASSAGE
THE UNFOLDING
THE THRESHOLD
THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
SECOND VERSION OF THE IMAGINARY
OF EMBRACE AND YET DRIFTING
REFLECTIONS OF THE CORPUS
THE SIGNIFICANT
THE POSSIBILITY
THE SOURCE
THE DUPLICITY
THE SOLITUDE
THE TRANSLATION
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cover painting by Peter Hughes
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20 pages (A5)
Published by Oystercatcher Press, Hunstanton
http://www.oystercatcherpress.com/
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from Blanchot’s Ghost (2008)
The Disappeared
The Stream
The Significant
The Passage
The Unfolding
The Threshold
The Edge of the World
Second Version of the Imaginary
Of Embrace and Yet Drifting
Reflections of the Corpus
The Possibility
The Duplicity
The Solitude
The Source
The Translation
Another Tongue (2009-2014)
Ghosts After Music
Hidden by Leaves
Written Off
A Blooming
Lance’d
Waiting to Happen
Waiting to Happen II – The Experience
Waiting to Happen III – The Movement
Holding Your Breath (for Wang Bang)
No Matter (2014-2016)
No Matter
The Drift
The Casualties
The Radiance
Impossible Skin
Vibrating Skies
No Matter II
Shell
Surface, Memory
The Parallels
I Sing the Blood
The Form
The Memory in Our Wings
The Mother
Palimpsest
The Book in Mind
Tears in the Fabric
The Event Horizon
Grave Air
Substance
Transmission
The Sky You Spoke
Oresteia
This Body
Re/Dis/Member
The Wake
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cover photograph by David Rushmer
The Empty Centre (2021)
Contents
The Empty Centre
Poetry sequence and photography
22 pages (A5)
Published by Aphonic / Space, Oakland CA, USA
http://aphonic.space/
What Space Between Us (2022)
Published August 2022. Paperback, 104pp, £10.95 / $18.50
ISBN 9781848618299
https://www.shearsman.com/store/David-Rushmer-What-Space-Between-Us-p447903758
Contents
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What Space Between Us
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A Matter of Memory
What Space Between Us
The Way
Intercourse
Forming Principles
Where We Vanish To
What Matters
Rising in the Sap (after Sappho)
The Gesture
Dictate
The Death Sensations
Particles and Atoms
When Night Fell
A Matter of Silence
Placed (for Wang Bang)
Kindling
Erased Matter
A Remembering of Soft Hair
A Book of Skin, or Liberation Through Seeing/Hearing During the Intermediate State
Panes (after James Joyce)
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Rushmer's spare and abstract linguistic structures may well be unique in contemporary British poetry, drawing, as they do, on a European poetic tradition that questions the nature of language and its relationship with perception. Words are valued for their own sake, held up for examination and made to chime like struck glass. To the crystalline abstractions that Rushmer inherits from French poetry is added Taoist-inspired spirituality and the influence of Chinese and Japanese calligraphy in an amalgam of great beauty. What Space Between Us is a landmark collection; a wide-ranging and rich series of poems, which asks time and attention of the reader, but will repay it abundantly.
Alan Baker
In the magazine Molly Bloom a little over a year ago David Rushmer’s poem ‘Meeting Me Halfway’ offered us ‘language as shape, a direction of breath’. Rather like Samuel Beckett’s Malone differentiated one experience from another ‘in the outcry without’ so Rushmer’s poetry offers the reader a ‘sky unloaded of its ghosts.’ After reviewing Remains to Be Seen (Shearsman, 2018) I had been left with that haunting sense of a poetry which lingers in the reader’s mind long after the book itself has been put down. The shape and direction of Rushmer’s individual voice are traced onto the page and they leave precise lines of marked engraving: reflections to return to time and again.
Ian Brinton
At a glance, Rushmer’s pages are poetically assembled words re-examining their nuances in context to the others in the same space to create a kaleidoscopic view of meanings. Each poem is ‘a theatre of multi-dimensional space’ and sits in a personal space. As explained by the title poem, it happens because he leads us in this collection to the language that is a weightless stone!
Yogesh Patel MBE
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Depth Charge
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Depth Charge
Wounds
Fathom
Tongue to Tongue
Night Flowered
Behind the Eyes
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Returning Breath
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Returning Breath
The Filament's Heat
Darkening
Lightforce
Still Time
White Drift
Meeting Me Halfway
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cover photograph by David Rushmer
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pen:umbra no.1, June 1989
Contents
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David Barton
Paul Buck
John Cussans
Don David
K.S. Foxall
Paul Green
David Houssart
Adam McKeown
Peter Philpott
David Rushmer
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edited by David Rushmer
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cover drawing by David Barton
32 pages
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pen:umbra no.2, Nov 1989
Contents
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Alain Veinstein (translated by Rosmarie Waldrop)
Don David
Paul Buck
David Rushmer
Paul Green
Bob Cobbing
Edward Mycue
Edmond Jabes (translated by Rosmarie Waldrop)
Adam McKeown
John Cussans
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edited by David Rushmer
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cover drawing by John Cussans
52 pages
pen:umbra no.3, Aug 1991
Contents
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P R Armstrong
Hans Arp (translated by Rosmarie Waldrop)
Don David
Francoise Duvivier
Lawrence Fixel
Norman Jope
Lisa Kucharski
Franz Mon (translated by Rosmarie Waldrop)
Edward Mycue
Jacques Roubaud (translated by Rosmarie Waldrop)
Peter deRous
David Rushmer
Cosey Fanni Tutti
Elizabeth Willis
Lyn Wilson
Johan De Wit
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edited by David Rushmer
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cover collage by David Rushmer
52 pages
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Works online
​Archive of the Now - https://www.archiveofthenow.org/authors/?i=83
1 poem: Writing (writing/a place I go).
Readings of 14 poems.
Angel Exhaust no.16 January 1999 - http://poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/issueccd1.html?id=474
3 poems; The Oracle Bone, Locus Amorphous, Untitled.
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BlazeVOX 16, Spring 2016 - http://www.blazevox.org/BX%20Covers/BXspring16/David%20Rushmer%20-%20Spring%2016.pdf
3 poems; Grave Air, The Event Horizon, Substance.
BlazeVOX 17, Fall 2017 - http://www.blazevox.org/BX%20Covers/BXFall2017/David%20Rushmer%A0-%20Fall17.pdf
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.
BlazeVOX 20, Fall 2020 - http://www.blazevox.org/BX%20Covers/BXFall20/Fall20%20-%20David%20Rushmer.pdf
Placed, A Remembering of Soft Hair, Fathom (from Depth Charge)
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​Epizootics Issue 1, November 2016 - https://issuu.com/epizootics/docs/final_draft_issue_one_2nd_november
1 poem: This Body.
Epizootics Issue 2, August 2017 - https://issuu.com/epizootics/docs/epizootics__issue_2
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 - http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue11_Rushmer.html
2 poems: Hidden by Leaves, Written Off.
E.ratio 12 2009 - http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue12_Rushmer.html
2 poems: A Blooming, Lance'd.
E. ratio 14 2011 - http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue14_Rushmer.html
1 poem: Waiting to Happen.
E.ratio 19 2014 - http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue19_Rushmer.html
1 poem: Holding Your Breath (for Wang Bang).
E.ratio 21 2015 - http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue21_Rushmer.html
1 poem: Shell.
E.ratio 25 2018 - http://www.eratiopostmodernpoetry.com/issue25_Rushmer.html
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 - http://www.greatworks.org.uk/poems/dr4.html
5 poems: Ghosts After Music, I Was Dead, A Lace of Shadows (for D H), Utterly, Threads.
Great Works - http://www.greatworks.org.uk/poems/dr1.html
3 poems: The Disappeared, The Stream, The Passage.
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Human Repair Kit - https://www.hrkzine.com/issues/
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 - https://www.hrkzine.com/david-rushmer2
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 -https://previously-in-mollybloom.weebly.com/david-rushmer.html
3 poems: No Matter, The Casualties, The Radiance.
Molly Bloom 8 2015 - https://previously-in-mollybloom.weebly.com/david-rushmer.html
2 poems: The Parallels, Surface Memory.
Molly Bloom 15 2018 - https://previously-in-mollybloom.weebly.com/david-rushmer2.html
3 poems: The Wake, A Matter of Memory, The Death Sensations.
Molly Bloom 19 2019 - https://mollybloom19.weebly.com/david-rushmer.html
2 poems: Darkening, Lightforce.
Molly Bloom 23 2020 - https://mollybloom23.weebly.com/david-rushmer.html
3 poems: Meeting me Halfway (after The Meridian by Paul Celan), Behind the Eyes (from Depth Charge), Tongue to Tongue (from Depth Charge)
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Moria volume 1, issue 9, 2006 - http://www.moriapoetry.com/rushmer.html
3 poems: Remains to Be Seen, Sound Asleep, A Journey Through the Body.
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Noon: Journal of the Short Poem 17/18 - 2020 - https://noonpoetry.com/issues/
2 poems: Writing IX (an echo...), Writing XXXIX (to put a tongue...)
Noon: Journal of the Short Poem 21/22 - 2022 - https://issuu.com/noonpress/docs/noon_21_22
1 poem: Speech Marks
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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 - https://the-otolith.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/david-rushmer.html
1 poem: The Filament's Heat.
Otoliths August 2020 - https://the-otolith.blogspot.com/2020/06/david-rushmer.html
1 poem: Panes (after James Joyce)
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OxMag Issue 38, Summer 2016 - https://issuu.com/oxmag/docs/oxmag_polished
1 poem, 2 paintings: The Mother, Blue Horizon, Enso 1.
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Sein und Werden Autumn 2016 - http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/autumn16/contents.html
1 poem, 2 photographs: A Blood Duet, Spine Tree, Night Tree (Praying Mantis).
Sein und Werden Summer 2020 - http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/summer20/index.html
1 poem, 1 photograph; Writing XI (you cannot enter this room), Untitled (Night Tree - colour)
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10th Muse no.13 2004 - http://poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/issuef5f2.html?id=490
3 poems: The Hostage (after Blanchot), Yawn of Ecstacy, The Mirror Cancels Her offspring.
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This Corner Pink Issue - http://shulpyakov.ru/files/PINKissueScan.pdf
1 poem: Utterly III.
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The Other - photograph by David Rushmer 1994
IN THE PRESS
