This site holds the digital edition of When the volts flowed, c. 2003–2006,
by Michael Ayres (see hypergram)

When the volts flowed is in three volumes: Delusion, Denial, Decay.

For the reader’s convenience, the trilogy is arranged in volume structure (see menu palette above) as well as in the consecutive posts below.

 

 

The perfectly ordinary girl and the great philosopher are alike: for both, the smallest triviality can become the vision that wipes out the world.

— Mishima, The Decay of the Angel

 

The trilogy of When the volts flowed consists largely of long poems, and was written around the turn of the millennium, with the majority of the trilogy finalised between my second (a.m., Salt, published 2003) and third (Kinetic, Shearsman, published 2007) collections.

The poetry is concerned with catastrophe, both personal and public, and evokes and embodies states of trauma, anomie and malaise: the trilogy is haunted, both internally and externally, by the ghosts of people who cannot grasp that their civilisation — doomed to collapse — has already effectively ended, and who go about their business without appearing to notice that they’re inhabiting a destroyed world. The coming disaster is inscribed in their routine behaviour — their clinging to old habits, their addiction to distraction, their immersion in, and retreat from, obsessions — and is often expressed in a poisoned psychology, which highlights itself in narcissism, anxiety, and a general refusal to believe the evidence of their reason and their senses.

When the volts flowed thus exhibits a treble spectrality: that of the people, that of their world, and that of the poetry itself.

Michael Ayres | August 2019