I have published a selection of my abstract writings as a free Heyzine online book here

I have been engaged in writing liberated from any deliberate attempt to convey a meaning since the 1960s.

I consider as ‘abstract’ my writings and paintings which are generated by some  conceptual or plastic process – such processes may suggest narrative or figurative possibilities but these are incidental rather than deliberate. The paintings which accompany these poems are not intended to illustrate the text, rather they are juxtaposed with the text, and any connection between text and image is again incidental. I feel that my notion of abstraction is a reversal of a modernism that moves away from the figurative into abstraction, a reversal of language departing from narrative to find release in syntax. Rather, I begin from some chaotic concept, then allow accident and inconsistency to take me wherever the poem finds its route, which may well prompt a sense of meaning. I readily invite the reader to invent the ghosts of stories, glimpses of scenes discovered by the process. (Prefatory statement)

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‘For many years, Anthony Howell has been unspooling his mad and lovely poems in England, yet has somehow managed to be not famous (I just checked). Is it because “I am trying to become an abstraction; something you read your own meaning into,” or “Don’t want to promote content. Want to be discontented,” or is it “To exist by telling the truth is an impossibility.” Whatever. Meanwhile, welcome to his wide, wild world…’

John Ashbery

This selection is published as an accompaniment to the Grey Suit edition of my Collected Longer Poems. Online publication allows me to include a selection of my paintings.

This book can be purchased at tangoshiva on ebay.