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Visions Of The Drowning Man
Dee Sunshine (previously Rimbaud), who I first met in 1980’s bohemian/punk London (Shepherd’s Bush) has a different encounter with the shadow, also because the poetry as a testimony is overtly personal, and because in its depth he is seeking a particular truth that by definition is wary of illusion. Reminiscent of Billy Childish, but with a vastly richer vocabulary, his diagnosis is through dissolution (echoing Rimbaud’s own disasssociation de tous ses sens.)
Junked out on television
we watched the world disintegrating
in raptures of violent dreams:
each dreamer being so much less
than the sum of the parts;
deconstructed from the whole.
Dee’s writing, as well-crafted in its own way, is also (like Childish’s) visceral: and the story he tells as the Drowning Man is through that deep embodiment. The struggle in it is to find transformation where the process appears to be so self-consuming…and, perhaps inevitably, self-centred. There’s a deep awareness of paradox throughout where light and dark (Madonna and Durga, as in ‘Autumn in Florence’) are juxtaposed without resolution…the softening beyond love’s absence (and sex’s all-consuming presence) comes later as the poems reach towards the title poem right at the end, and tenderness beckons. Dee’s alchemical lovers are both sexual and child-like, desperate and clinging: their very ‘lostness’ echoes his own, and history’s own echoed in the haunting poem ‘A Burnt Offering’ (one of his best), 50 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau (1945/1995) where he explores his Jewishness beside his Scottish nationality to potent effect, precisely reaching beyond nationalism.
Who are these Scots
That claim this nation?
Are they Picts, Celts and Norse?
Britons, Angels and Saxons?
Italians, Irish and Jews?
African, Chinese and Asian?
…
Who is Scottish, exactly?
And beyond that, the vision (if his lover was with him)
All would be dissolved
in the fire of our Shiva-Shakti.
All would be undone
in the tender loop of love.
This is personally what I hang on to, reading this, immersed in another wave of suffering which is also his quest to understand love and its absence within himself. And, through his body as witness, to state
Through this blood flower
through the angry vibrant red of it,
the root of our collective being,
the root of our animal soul,
we struggle towards the light.
And so his journey as Drowning Man/Everyman struggles through lust (having drowned in it) to awakening to what the trip has revealed as he sheds its skin…meanwhile, traveller that he is, he’s journeying on. Miles to go before he sleeps. And, definitely I’d say, promises to his heart to keep.
Jay Ramsay
Visions Of The Drowning Man - Comments by Dee Sunshine
My latest poetry collection, "Visions Of The Drowning Man" was conceived in the 1990's. The poems in this collection, many of them long and complex sequences, were first drafted nearly 20 years ago, around the time I had my first spiritual awakening. The poems are a reflection of the excitement and anticipation I felt when I opened up to Spiritual Healing and at the same time started exploring various spiritual disciplines. They are also a catalogue of my struggles to overcome old patterns and beliefs; struggles often resulting in failure and even despair. They are, I believe (with 20 years hindsight) a realistic picture of the battle that eventually becomes a game, but still from the standpoint and belief that the journey towards spiritual clarity is a struggle.
If you are on the spiritual path, or if you have fallen off of it, these poems will resonate with you. There is none of the fluffy rainbow hippie bullshit that you'll find in much new age poetry. This is visceral and bloody honest stuff. It comes from the heart and it comes from the guts. It speaks the truth where others choose to speak in tranquilised platitudes.
This book is available direct from my publisher, Skylight Press. You can also buy it via Amazon and other retailers.
I think you will find it an interesting read. These poems have been over a decade in the making, all of them re-written and re-worked and re-edited many times over. I believe they are my best poems to date. They are also accompanied by 21 plates of my art work, making this book a handsome piece of work. The book is £10.99 in the UK and US$17.99 elsewhere and it comes in a beautifully designed cover with a colour illustration of the visionary drowning man.
Dee Sunshine was born in 1962, in Glasgow, Scotland. He started writing poetry in his teens
and was inspired to take his writing seriously after he won the Lochaber High School poetry competition
in 1979. He was active in the London poetry scene in the early 80's and published a couple of chapbooks.
He produced an alternative arts/ poetry zine, Dada Dance, from 1984 to 1990.
In 1986, he commenced studies at Edinburgh College Of Art, specialising in Sculpture, which
he studied to post-graduate level. Whilst at art school he won an Andrew Grant travelling
scholarship to India; a John Kinross Scholarship to Florence, Italy; and participated in an exchange
programme, studying for three months at L'Ecole Des Beaux Arts, Le Havre, France.
After graduating, he worked in community arts, arts development, film & television, and as a
freelance illustrator and graphic designer. He did his fair share of less glamorous jobs too,
including a six-month stint in a fish factory. He's also put in a great many unpaid hours as
editor of Acid Angel and The AA Independent Press Guide.
He retired prematurely from a glittering career in the Scottish film industry, after
suffering a brain haemorrhage in September 2001 and was in hospital when the World
Trade Centre was "attacked by terrorists". Ten days later his daughter, Rosie
Sunshine, was born.
He has published two books of poetry, The Bad Seed (1998) and Dropping Ecstasy With The Angels (2004),
and a novel, Stealing Heaven From The Lips Of God (2004). He also edited the charity poetry anthology
The Book Of Hopes And Dreams (2006). His poetry and short stories have been published in hundreds of
print and internet magazines worldwide, as has his art. His music is available extensively over the
web and he has a MySpace at Captain Melted
for his more twisted/ cut-up electronica and another MySpace at Sunshine Soundz
for his more relaxed, ambient music.
Dee's third collection of poetry, Visions Of The Drowning Man (2009) has been released as
an e-book, which can be downloaded for free from Obooko.com, as can his most recent publication,
Red Dreams And Razorblades: Collected Poems 1980-2005 (2009).
Since 2006 Dee has been leading a nomadic, dividing his time between Scotland, Spain and India.
When not writing, making art, making music or editing websites he has been pursuing his ambition
to become a polyglot; attempting to improve his French and Spanish, as well as trying to fathom
the mystery of Hindi.
Email: Dee Sunshine
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