By using this site you agree to the use of cookies. – and these are only what I’ve heard over the years trapped in my four walls she cuts her own hair with a pudding bowl on top of her head she propositioned two boys in the Jackdaw one night leopard printed tit sacks out on the table balancing a pint on each “me fanny’s really wet yer know” the boys ran off (never to be seen again) you can probably find her on but she almost definitely can catch a glimpse getting the once over from two men at once on their daily rounds she hangs round with Crystal on the last bus home for a backseat quickie to pay for her next bag of brown as for the truth all I know is this: somewhere off Stutton Rd the first time I had as opposed to my i laid down my coat on the grass and I came like the police are coming, i bet they are because now I was

and now I had like a gimp on back to the pub and overgrown secret paths which cut across the backs of the hospital like surgery scars on desolate hills up the winding stone staircase to an industrial ground-zero and dripping chimneys spewing thick, grey chemical smoke to the blackened wall where I wrote the inscription “Joy Division” in silver paint when I close my eyes the images play out a travelogue of childhood flashes: from a secluded path where an acne scarred girl charged one cigarette for a hand-job and a glimpse of tit to the crumbling, faux-Victorian pub were I was served my first beer and the old, beaten up whores of Clayton Street, lurking in the shadows of the lumber yards and the gas works waiting for trade to stumble drunkenly from the twinkling lights of the pubs and clubs the frozen image of a sad-eyed young girl staring out window of a terraced house

and then stolen away in a flutter of net curtains and a girl I once knew, half dead now, crushed with poverty and port wine two incubator babies and her insides dumped into hospital bins before she turned thirty: I served my time in dusty world war two bedrooms you wrote your name in childlike letters on a box of forgotten papers in a stifling attic I severed my ties bled from my hands, my mouth, all of the others still locked behind a sturdy steel door of drunken recollection hand frozen over a glass of bitter forever wired on pink amphetamines brutalized by the intervening years some killed by work, some by knives, and some by the steady the US secretary of state waving from the town hall steps with the local MP (who lives in Whitehall) both smiling stiffly beneath how fitting – Basra, Gaza while in The Swan those driven insane by the brutal drudgery of it all

drink cider and whiskey to forget to speed up time’s monotonous progression desperate to skip ahead to the final act a handful of mourners it was a lovely service underneath the crumbling architecturejack curtin liquid diet of Queen Park hospitalowl shower curtain lakeside looking down from my spot on the wallmaia embroidery silk curtain fabric at the empty bottles of Zeppelin and White Lighteningready made curtains cavan discarded bras and dosser’s blanketssecond hand curtains cirencester

I’d close my eyes and listen to the Imam’s call to prayer floating up from Audley Range a welcome interloper from some inaccessible continent the feel of the light, July wind on my face, and I concedeorange emily floral eyelet curtains there is something special heredaisy ochre curtains hidden away from prying eyes neither from the council estates of Higher Croft nor the abandoned terraces of Shakeshaft Street something that appears at dusk during stolen moments of peace like this before it is inevitably carried away Adelle Stripe is a performance poet/fiction writer from Tadcaster, UK. Her work has appeared in Full Moon Empty Sports Bag, Laura Hird, 3:AM, Vomit In The Mainstream, Rising Poetry, Scarecrow, and Savage Kick. She edits the definitive Brutalist weblog, Straight From The Fridge and will one day release her secrets to the world in paperback under the banner “Things I Never Told Anyone”.

Adelle hopes to retire to the country and become the only female professional rat catcher in the north, sometime before her 35th birthday. Ben Myers is a published author and poet. He has published many books including a collection of journalism, a number of biographies and one acclaimed debut novel The Book Of Fuck (Wrecking Ball Press), collectively published in five languages. Ben was born in Durham and currently resides in London, UK. He has been publicly beaten up three times in his adult life. Another three times it was ‘a draw.’ Tony O’Neill is the author of the autobiographical novel Digging The Vein (Contemporary Press/Wrecking Ball Press), the short story collection Seizure Wet Dreams (Social Disease), and an upcoming collection of poetry Songs From The Shooting Gallery (Burning Shore Press). He was born in Blackburn, Lancashire and currently resides in New York City. He is currently hung over and listening to Suicide’s ‘Dream Baby Dream’. The Brutalists were formed by writers Tony O’Neill, Adelle Stripe and Ben Myers during the long record-breaking heatwave summer of 2006.

All are active members of the literary underground, publishing their work via a plethora of books, anthologies, fanzines, websites, readings and weblogs. They are as influenced by music as they are writers, citing shared (but disparate) influences such as punk and post-punk, Dan Fante, ragga, jazz, Velvet Underground, Billy Childish, Black Flag, Herbert Hunke, Joy Division (and countless others)… Brutalism calls for writing that touches upon levels of raw honesty that is a lacking form most mainstream fiction. We cannot simply sit around waiting to be discovered — we would rather do it ourselves. Total control, total creativity. The Brutalists see ourselves as a band who have put down their instruments and picked up their pens and scalpels instead. The only maxim we adhere to is an old punk belief, which we have bastardised for our own means: Here’s a laptop. Now write a novel. Brutalist writing is open to anyone who shares similar ideas about the role of literature.