Sam Jenks
Writing & Arts
Writing
Intertextual Fiction
Robinson in Chronostasis - a surrealist psychogeographical non-romance
Psychogeography's archetypal anti-hero, Robinson, stalks both the city (Bath) and artist (Koji Tsukada) in a shadowy, queer exploration of memory and myth. Inspired by the works of Andre Breton, WG Sebald, Patrick Keiller, and Walter Benjamin; Jenks through Robinson uses Tsukada’s photographs and Jackson’s design to explore his own history and the artistic process, whilst taking the reader on multiple dérives of the city.
Credits: Koji Tsukada (Photography), Dan Jackson (Book Design), Steve Benson (Foreword)
Publisher - Magdalen Yard Books 2022
'Jenks’s narrative takes the reader on a journey through the streets of Bath, mixing past and present, memory and sensation. In doing so he seems to raise questions about our perception of time and the nature of story-telling and memory.’ Psychogeographic Review’s Books of the Year 2022
'Two men (apparently Jenks and Tsukada) appear to be in the same city as each other and repeatedly fail to meet (although it’s more complex and more fun than that)' Vertigo’s Photography Embedded Fiction and Poetry 2022
Short Stories
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Lucky Strike
Homeless sex-worker, Manny, fakes his way into a Soho art project and ends up channelling the area’s past.
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Test Tube Baby
A British writer on a writing retreat in Japan, seeking new friends, finds himself lost and out of his depth in a Sapporo city park.
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Breaking Bread with the Pomaks
Father and young son explore one of the isolated muslim villages of Northern Greece.
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Editor Role
Queer Writing for a Brave New World
Commissioning Editor
Out on the Page's first print publication in partnership with The Modernist Society. Twenty LGBTQ+ writers and artists explore the spirit of Modernism through a multiplicity of queer lenses. This wonderfully diverse selection of new writing, photography and visual poetry was selected from entries from across the UK and beyond.
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Artbook
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Chronostasis
A Japanese artist, English Writer and King Apple play with memories of Bath.
Collaboration with artist Koji Tsukada.
"Like memories that have somehow broke loose from me."
"Luigi reached for the Brylcreem and fingered the white sloppiness into Manny's dark brown hair and combed him back into 1959."
Lucky Strike
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"I left my local dialect behind and let Liverpool, Sheffield and Manchester shape my mouth and my words."
"Every couple of minutes, the glass box of a station entrance pumped out a glut of people, and I scanned the men’s faces as they dispersed."
Test Tube Baby
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"...we became interested in the optimism of modernism, that sense of emerging from adversity towards something better."
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"I thought he might have lived amongst these shadows until I saw the warehouse trolley in the left of the picture and realised that he too was packing or unpacking in another space, perhaps another time."
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