A British-origin poet based in Brussels.
Work by M. E. Grey is featuring irregularly in satirical zine The Bupkes. ‘Snack (Austrian Airlines)‘ was published in March, and ‘Bad threads‘ was published today. Future publications depend on, among other things, the existence of the future.
The Bupkes launched in October 2024 and is running as a Substack. A subscription offers you “a front-row seat to the confounding nothingness that is the everything of our era.”
Yes, the title of the poem is a link. Tea & Friendship is a group show curated by Alice Mary Jelaska, at Pop Up SPACE, Hackney, until 18 April 2024. Details of the show here.
A new poem by M. E. Grey, ‘swan’, appears in the flipbook Still Dancing: Writing about dancing about architecture, infrastructure, access, economics, inter alia, published by TLTRPreß. The book brings together Kherbek’s photographs of a performance by dancer Leah Katz, alongside poems and prose from Sydney Beaumont, Alexis Calvas, Kitty Ray Harper Fedorec, Susan Finlay, M. E. Grey, Mina Khanlarzadeh, and Greg Nissan, with the collective aim of opening ‘new approaches to thinking about dance’ – and advertising, public transport, social media…
From the work of Kitty Ray Harper Fedorec:
What if we’re not always our best? I mean – we’re not always at our best, are we? What if your best is not my best?
If I take out of my zoetrope all the photos bar the one where all four hooves are off the ground, the horse can no longer run.
From ‘Movement for Beginners’, by Greg Nissan:
you should know
the camera adds
four corners
to your hips
Remember taxis? A regular feature of professional and personal life for many – and then absent from those same lives since early 2020. M. E. Grey has selected a series of poems featuring taxis for publication in Eurolitkrant:
Eurolitkrant is an interdisciplinary, European, online literary journal recently launched by Ali Bader.
Update: This event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
William Kherbek’s chapbook ’26 Ideologies for aspiring Ideologists’ sold out shortly after its publication by If a Leaf Falls Press in 2018. But on Friday 13 March, you have the opportunity to absorb a doctrine of your own – you will leave knowing one of these poems by heart. How this affects your life thereafter is up to you.
Kherbek is an artist, novelist, poet and critic based between London and Berlin – a little like Brussels itself. His most recent novel, Ultralife, was published by Arcadia Missa in 2019; you can find more information on his activities at www.kherbekistan.com.
The evening will also feature other readers, to be announced. It will take place at KANO at 8pm.
This event continues M. E. Grey’s collaboration in organising readings that feature visiting and local writers with the support of KANO.
Poet and two-times Singapore Literary Prize winner Yong Shu Hoong will read at an event at KANO at 4pm on Sunday 1 March.
Shu Hoong will read a selection of work from his extensive catalogue (six full collections), and provide insights into Singapore’s unique literary scene.
Joining Yong Shu Hoong to read will be Brussels-based poet Loretta Stanley. Originally from Ireland, Loretta and Shu Hoong’s work build on two very different forms of island experiences.
This reading is organised by M. E. Grey, and builds on the series of private readings he has been organising in Brussels since 2018. He is pleased to take this format public with the support of KANO.
For more information, please contact M E Grey via the contact form on this website.
Three poems from M. E. Grey will feature in The Circle 19: A Brussels Anthology: ‘flashbulb handshake’, ‘impact pathway metric’, and ‘scenario’.
The Circle 2019 is the new anthology from the Brussels Writers’ Circle, edited by Cynthia Huijgens and featuring twenty seven writers from fourteen countries.
The anthology launch takes place at Brussels Waterstones on Tuesday 26th November from 17:30 until 19:00.
M. E. Grey will be reading at a second event at Muntpunt Grand Café on Saturday 30th November, from 19:00 until 21:00, featuring readings and discussions with Huijens and contributing authors.
The anthology is available to purchase from Brussels Waterstones, Amazon and elsewhere.
‘Empirical’, the twelfth and final poem in the ‘Pages of an Autumn Journal’ sequence, has now been posted at www.autumnjournal.eu. This poem concludes the series, and 2016 too:
They say
When one door closes, another one opens
Observe
Many rooms have only one door
‘Pages of an Autumn Journal‘ is profiled as a work in progress by the Brussels Writers’ Circle blog. M E Grey participates in the circle, and the blog post provides an overview of the project and the role that the circle has played in shaping it.
‘Pages of an Autumn Journal’ is a sequence of poems written between October and December 2016. The poems offer the perspective of a British narrator based in Brussels, and her/his political, personal and professional experiences during that period. In this engagement with matters public and private during a season of turbulent events, they have a precedent in Louis Macneice’s Autumn Journal of 1938.
The poems are now being published one year later at www.autumnjournal.eu, between October and December 2017, following the timeline of their composition. In this way, they allow the reader to experience how the experiences described in the poems unfolded, as well as finally offering a record, through one poetic interpretation, of their specific period and place in history.
M E Grey 