WYSTAN CURNOW
Episodes
First Season
Like where Akasha brings the twins to her court
Khayman like rapes them, and Mekare then asks the
spirit of Amel to avenge them (Jim and Mary Barr like this
and think you will like it too). Akasha fuses with, oozes
out Maharet and makes her a vampire who in
turn makes Enkil a derivative. Together they wax, green
eyes aglow as they go to ground. Hand over fist. Maharet
has a mortal daughter, Miriam (not Catherine Deneuve)
who begets the Great Family and scores a scholar-
ship at the Royal College of Art in London, England.
Khayman hits the roller deck and takes Maharet and Mekare
back to Egypt. Akasha makes Khayman a pyramid
(Carlo Ponzi loves this). Khayman pokes
Mekare who pokes Maharet (Tee-hee!). Maharet and
Mekare are separated and sealed into coffins; both escape
but fail to find each other on YouTube. Ruark Lewis would
like to be their friend, but first must face his past.
Akasha and Enkil make other arrangements;
they are worshipped, of course, they have 666 friends
in common, but are trapped for many years so other vampires
get to steal, and bank, their blood. This was 5000 BC
remember: no one worked through their issues
back in that day. Finally, they free themselves but, dis-
enchanted, they whine, they wane and begin their gradual
melting away from the world. Whereas Khayman, he
returns to the islands and makes vampires who
war with those undead clones Adoboli and Iksil. Ad
nauseam. Akasha and Enkil go into their ‘deep image’ tranche
and must now rotate providers, or face retrenchment.
Maharet makes Eric a vampire, Anais a toad and
retreats to a tax shelter. The pitiless Elder places Akasha
and Enkil in the sun, causing 2nd season vampire burns with-
out exemption. God of the Grove (Chief Druid blood
sucker) turns 40yr old Marius.
Evil blue-eyed Mael becomes a sphere entire.
An Alpha networker, he’s on a role (Sp). All the while old
Marius ages and takes Akasha and Enkil out of Egypt to Antioch.
Maharet goes to Antioch too and takes the creative writing
course. During the crit she claims she plunged a
dagger in Akasha’s heart to establish the truth of the legend
that Akasha must exist for all other vampires to exist, and is re-
commended to Iowa by her Professor. Whereupon she draws
down her funds in Girls Gone Wild. Santino’s now
a vampire (Suck and swoon!). John Hurrell receives some
surprising new information. Marius makes Armand a virgin
when Armand is seventeen, and Akasha’s like, that’s so
random! Who’s your secret server? After ingesting
derivatives Magnus too becomes a vampire. Anthony
Hecht likes that, which is not like him at all. (to be continued)
Louis de Pointe du Lac’s mortal birth: blood’s all over, every
body slips and slides, and gets sticky (Aw, that’s so
icky!). Mortal Lestat gets into the Grove and
slays werewolves, swinging his blade with soft hands.
Remediated, he elects to go with Nicholas (guest star, Matt
Davis, Legally Blonde) and Robespierre to Paris, to be-
come an actor. Flashback: enjoying new powers
Magnus makes twenty-year old Lestat a Premium Stake-
holder Vampire (PSV), bloods him and then he goes into the fire.
With Brian Boyd who knows the story, Lestat makes his
Mother Gabrielle a vampire. Lestat encounters
Armand’s coven. Lestat makes a tidy sum, a killing.
Lestat gives Renaud’s Theatre to four vampires who, with
Nicholas Bourriaud, turn it into the Theatre of the
Retired Vampires.
Lestat and Gabrielle become frequent flyers;
Lestat pens the first of his many bestsellers. Nicholas
goes into the fire. Lestat’s mortal family is killed during the
famous French Revolution. After dying of the plague,
Edgar Allan Poe suggests Anais and he go for a
coffee. They do the rounds. Gabrielle leaves Lestat to go
into the woods for a spot of extreme self-rendition, and experi-
ences déjà vu. She’s drawing blood, sucking up bodily
fluids wherever they may be. Lestat goes underground
in New Zealand, where once again he proceeds to push his
portfolio. Marius subsequently subdues Lestat (Tom Cruise), and
takes him to the Samoan islands where Akasha and Kim
Dotcom sit as statues. Big Time. Face to face with
the terrifying new danger in the jungle. About now Lestat
awakens Akasha who’s slept through the entire Equinox, but
Marius relents and sends them both away.
Lestat and Louis drink the blood of slaves from Pointe
du Lac, draining the labour pool. Unbeknownst
to his shrink, Lestat makes twenty-five year-old Helena
Sword a vampire. He’s so unconscionable! Next thing you know
the three of them have set up house on Rampart Street.
Helena pokes Lestat, she sucks him, and tosses his
remains into the swamp. Which’s all the thanks he gets.
Still, when Lestat’s buoyed up again on the King tide, regurgitated
so to speak, an infuriated Witi burns down the house.
Downs another bourbon; and on the proceeds
from Sunday’s fund-raising carwash, flees with Helena
to Europe where they melt into the crowd. She’s got red curly
hair, flashing eyes (green) and an unbelievable bundle
of swaps. Helena and Witi seek out Old World
vampires in the linen fields of Brittany, the remnants
of the famed Fang Gang of Finistere.
(Now read on) First they find nothing. Helena and Witi repair
to the Ecole Superior, and take a blood bath (bain de
sang), whilst Lestat makes a blazing comeback
from his writer’s retreat on Ibiza. Henri Louis Le Cren
shares a link with Audrina and shortly thereafter invites her to the
Theatre of Cruelty. They go into the Cul-de-Sac by the
side door, bleeding profusely from their wounds.
Sheriff Forbes delivers some unsettling news to Adoboli
and Iksil. Louis bites Madeleine, also a vampire (Suck and wipe!)
Armand’s bloodthirsty coven, who once were were-
wolves, destroys Helena and Madeleine, outraging
Louis who retaliates by burning down the Theatre
of the Plastoscene (Sp) Vampires (TPV). Louis then returns by
way of Spitalfields to New Orleans, where he claims
to have seen Lestat again. (Martin Creed loves
this, you should too.)
Wystan Curnow was born in Christchurch in 1939, and educated at the University of Auckland, and the University of Pennsylvania where he completed a PhD in the poetry of Herman Melville in 1972. He lectured in English, more particularly in American literature, at the Universities of Rochester, York (Toronto) and Auckland where he is now a Professor Emeritus. He has published extensively on modern and contemporary art and literature. His selected art writings, The Critic’s Part, were published by Victoria University Press in 2014. He was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature and art in 2005.
Curnow has been writing poetry for over four decades. Five books have been published, the most recent of them, The Art Hotel, as scene of reading, a collaboration with architect Dino Chai, was published by Split/Fountain in 2009. ‘Text for a Cul-de-Sac’, commissioned by Lawrence Weiner, was published in Weiner's artist book, The Other Side of a Cul de Sac (The Power Plant, Toronto), and a selection from his first collection, Cancer Daybook, 1989, was reprinted in a book published by the Drawing Center, New York, to accompany its 2016 exhibition of Jennifer Bartlett’s pastels, entitled Hospital. His poems have appeared in journals such as the London Review of Books, Landfall (New Zealand), Jacket, Green Integer Review, and EOAGH (USA) among others. His work has been included in 10 anthologies.
He has given readings in London, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cologne, Halifax, Calgary, San Francisco, San Diego, Buffalo, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Brisbane. He has been a visiting writer at the prestigious Kelly Writers House, at the University of Pennsylvania and has occupied four international writer’s residencies: a Poetry Fellowship at the University of New York at Buffalo (1991), a Moet & Chandon fellowship in Avize, France (1997), an Institute of Modern Art Brisbane residency (2010) and the Landfall/Seresin Tuscany residency that same year.
Curnow comments: ‘Charles Bernstein once contrasted poems that mapped consciousness with poems that mapped the language. These days mine are of the latter kind. Each takes a particular pathway through the language we use and that uses us.
‘My poems are not usually one-off. “Episodes: first season” and its companion “Episodes: second season” (Landfall 229, Autumn 2015) belongs—although it's probably too early to say, to a new project with the working title ‘Wealth, or The Return of the Free Lunch’. These two start with plot summaries of episodes of TV series, vampire series in this case, and take it from there. Some of the references are obscure, but then none of us occupies the same corner of the language’