Ask the Author: Gareth Durasow

Gareth Durasow’s instructional incendiary poem appears in London Calling. He talks with us about the mother of all bombs, what he’s waiting for, and grenade wedding crashing.

1. How would you make a bomb out of your mother?

It’s a highly intrusive and delicate procedure; one which I have neither the inclination nor the constitution to carry out. I suppose it’s like Blue Peter meets the Human Centipede with an oedipal twist. If you really want to know, and possess a certain degree of immoral fortitude, you can find the instructions here: http://www.thingsforsickpuppiestomakeoutoftheirmother.com. (Link was active at the time of writing.)

2. I noticed you used a lot of traditional end rhyme in “…Mother”. Why did you choose to use that in writing this poem?

I seem to remember Ouija boarding Plath
I don’t remember much after that

3. How would you mack on Carmen Sandiego?

I’d write ‘Maltese Falcon’ on a highly ostentatious gift box and then wear said gift box as per Justin Timberlake’s instructions in the song ‘Dick in a Box’. Then I’d hide behind a painting in the Louvre and wait for Miss Sandiego to do the rest.

4. Whose wedding would you crash with hand grenades?

In the months since I wrote that poem I’ve moved onto an even more clichéd form of marital intervention; the unleashing of a single baboon wearing a suicide vest made out of cans of cream soda, party poppers and angry bees. So far there has only been one wedding to warrant that kind of intervention and I was the best man, so crashing it wasn’t really an option.

When Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks get married it’ll perhaps be appropriate to roll a couple of flashbangs under the door of the bridal suite, but nothing that could maim or kill. Besides, I daresay Obama is planning to send the boys round to get them while they’re naked.

Now you need to wash your mind.

5. What are you waiting for?

Here’s my top ten (in reverse order):

10) My illegitimate child to come knocking.
9) Westboro Baptist Church: The Musical.
8) My proposed webchat acronym FUatHURiO to catch on (Fuck you and the horse you rode in on).
7) FIFA to realise that football would be so much more fun if an extra ball was thrown into play every time someone scored.
6) A TED Talk about how Pepé Le Pew is more than a little bit rapey.
5) Hale-Bopp.
4) Someone to give my shoulders a good rub.
3) A 12” garlic margherita with mushrooms.
2) Gemma Arterton.
1) Gemma Arterton to deliver a 12” garlic margherita with mushrooms, and to then, upon handing me the pizza, comment on how tense my shoulders look and offer to give them a good rub. I’d thank her kindly, there would be a moment between us, and then I’d mention, quite casually, how unusual the moon looks tonight. She would laugh, I would politely enquire as to what she was laughing at, she would say, “That’s Hale-Bopp, silly”, I would laugh too (because I actually knew it was Hale-Bopp all along, I was just pretending to think it was the moon) and then we would sit on the roof, watching Hale-Bopp, she rubbing my shoulders and I eating my pizza. Afterwards, I’d bid her adieu with a kiss on the hand, she would saddle up on Hale-Bopp (albeit reluctantly due to my gentlemanly conduct ) and then she’d leave me there, alone in the moonlight, holding the pizza box with its one remaining slice (I wouldn’t have the heart to tell her she’d forgotten to ask for the money), a lonely tear rolling down my cheek as the comet disappears into the night sky, the fleeting oblivion of slumber my only respite from the heart-rending certainty that I would never see my Gemma again. I’d wake up in the morning, hungry, and with the last slice of delicious garlic margherita with mushrooms being the only thing readily available, I would lift it to my mouth – noticing that it had somehow magically retained its heat over night – and there, glued to the base by thick tendrils of cheese and tomato, would be a slip of paper emblazoned with the word FUatHURiO written in fresh ink and followed by a cheeky little x.

6. When do you read the tabloids?

I tend not to read the tabloids. Headlines such as ‘Anorexic at five’ don’t really do anything for me. And I don’t like how the newsprint comes off on my hands. It exacerbates the already considerable feeling of having been soiled. Although, having said that, the day after Osama bin Laden was killed there was a tabloid headline which made me laugh aloud in the shop. It simply read ‘BIN-BAGGED’. They’d probably had that one lined up since 9/11. It wasn’t enough to compel me to part with my money, but it did make me giggle to myself most of the way home. My front door was approximately 26 steps away.