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Patrick Langley
Patrick Langley's debut novel Arkady was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in March 2018. He writes on contemporary art for Frieze, Art Agenda, and other publications. He is a contributing editor at The White Review.

Articles Available Online


Jesse Ball’s ‘Census’

Book Review

May 2018

Patrick Langley

Book Review

May 2018

Reading Jesse Ball’s new novel feels like being hypnotised, or like having your heart broken – but really it feels like both at once....

Book Review

November 2017

M. John Harrison's 'You Should Come With Me Now'

Patrick Langley

Book Review

November 2017

In a 2012 interview with the Guardian, M. John Harrison argued that the segregation of literature into genres is ‘a...

WHISKY WITH MOTHER as the electric blue fades into the small hours and now, a long way from home, my hands are covered in excrement I didn’t know my own smell, the layer of smell that forms on the body as the hours without water go by My tongue gets distracted by eating grass Sucking on an animal’s hard udders, sucking on the fur, the teeth all dolled up, or imagining the death of your parents It’s all the same From the moment he entered my head, this saltwater hell Zealous hammering on my veins The trouble with my brain is I can’t hold it back, it rolls on and on through the spiky undergrowth like a bulldozer Where am I I don’t recognise these big houses I’ve never rounded this bend in the road Degenerate desire Damaging desire Demented desire I don’t know how to get back My mother will be blind drunk, sprawled on the sloping grass, her feet carved up by the blades The clouds are tree trunks at this time of night My hangover’s fierce and I collapse any old how to masturbate, my hair electrified, my skin hot, my eyelids stiff My hand works away then falls still as an insect, so that nothing is enough Me and him in a convertible Me and him on a muddy road Bodies shouldn’t have breasts after a certain age; when my breasts turn to thick heavy flesh I’ll have them removed Women should stop opening their sex, too I look for a word to replace the word I look for a word that shows my devotion The word that marks the spot, the distance, the exact centre of my delirium We should be like tiny snakes till the end, and be buried that way, in long holes like gutters I get up feeling anxious, my head thick with blood I walk round the house and open the windows The wind sweeps over the insect corpses trapped in the mosquito net He keeps jars back there full of rusty water and all kinds

Contributor

August 2014

Patrick Langley

Contributor

August 2014

Patrick Langley’s debut novel Arkady was published by Fitzcarraldo Editions in March 2018. He writes on contemporary art for Frieze, Art...

Art

September 2014

Semi Floating Sculpture

Luke Hart

Patrick Langley

Art

September 2014

Luke Hart will meet me at Gate 7. I get the text on the DLR, heading east past Canary...

Ordinary Voids

feature

Issue No. 9

Ed Aves

Patrick Langley

feature

Issue No. 9

I am standing in a parallelogram of shrubbery outside London City Airport. Ed is twisting a dial on his Mamiya RZ67 and squinting into its viewfinder. He...
Car Wash

fiction

January 2013

Patrick Langley

fiction

January 2013

He is sitting on the back seat of a car, somewhere in France. It’s a bright blue day, absurdly hot, and the roads are...
Ryan Trecartin: The Real Internet is Inside You

Art

April 2012

Patrick Langley

Art

April 2012

 ‘What’s that buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzing?’ Marshall McLuhan   1: Your Original Is Having A Complete Human Change Meltdown Makeover   It’s difficult to describe Ryan Trecartin’s...
Nigel

poetry

September 2011

Patrick Langley

poetry

September 2011

Jamie sat alone at the edge of the dance floor and wondered how long it would be until Nigel arrived. The band had been...
Beyond the Horizon

fiction

Issue No. 1

Patrick Langley

fiction

Issue No. 1

Listen to the silence, let it ring on. (Joy Division, Transmission) I It is not yet dawn. The city is a distant murmur. Laid...

READ NEXT

fiction

March 2017

Initiation

Guadalupe Nettel

TR. Rosalind Harvey

fiction

March 2017

Aside from its absence of windows, my apartment is a mausoleum which bestows an epic dimension upon the important...

poetry

June 2014

Death on Rua Augusta

Tedi López Mills

TR. David Shook

poetry

June 2014

Translator’s Note Death on Rua Augusta is a book I knew I would translate before I had even finished...

poetry

Issue No. 2

The Brothel

Kit Buchan

poetry

Issue No. 2

I unearthed a little brothel in the spring of forty-three, It was captained by a midwife who was ninety...

 

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