collaborations with Sarah Jacobs:

• 'Intersecting Words', Artist's Book Yearbook 2014-2015, (ed: Sarah Bodman), Centre for Fine Print Research, University of the West of England (Impact Press, 2013)
• AFTER NATURE PROJECT (Colebrooke Publications, 2014)

casual reading 3

syllable is thine
every stroke of his dead limb
sounded like a coffin tap
on life and death this old man walked
this midnight
had almost grown a forgotten thing
his jets are erect
full
and black like soot

white curds in his wake
long-togged scarramouch
opened all his seals and vials
nimble-as-a-cat
look-e here, put thy live leg here
in the place where mine once was

strange-thoughted sometimes
only haphazard-like
dashing the rattling light’ning links
part changed my flesh since that time

um um um

first published in AND no.13; eds: Adrian Clarke and Ulli Freer (non-imprint artzine, 2010)

“Mike Weller – he’s the fella.”--Doug Jones

‘Michael J. Weller is an… artist whom it is difficult to categorise. He is predominantly but not exclusively a visual artist who has a strong interest in comic strip, graphic novels etc. In his work, graphic art mingles with literature and, to some extent, with film.’ --Lawrence Upton, ‘Sound Poets in England, Scotland and Wales’, NCCA Kaliningrad, 2001

‘Jeff Hilson told me that Mike Weller designed the album cover for David Bowie’s American issue of The Man Who Sold The World. Or was it The Man Who Fell To Earth?’ --Tim Atkins, The Mother of all Mermaids review, onedit online

‘There is a danger in this thumbnail sketch of painting Hilson as a sort of literary Womble*, or implying that his verse is trivial or whimsical. In the polarized world of contemporary poetry, the ‘linguistically innovative’ or (loosely) Modernist tradition is so often justified in terms of weightiness or political relevance. Though poetry that deals in ‘lightness’ may be much appreciated, as in the case with stretchers or the work of Tim Atkins or Mike Weller, there seems to be a problem for critical discourse in writing up this quality as something other than insubstantiality.’ *The reference is to oversized rodent squatters of Wimbledon Common who found uses for “things that the everyday folks leave behind […].”--Stephen Thomson, ‘The Forlorn Ear of Jeff Hilson’, Complicities (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, December 2007): 154.

‘Will the real Mike Weller please stand up??’ --Natalie d’Arbeloff

‘Mike Weller, Poetry Feller’--Posie Rider, Sad Press Books’ Mossad Press (out of print)

Weller (vocal response to Spurious Purple no. 004)--Becky Cremin