Enjoy Oblivion is a short chapbook from Wolfgang Carstens that is well-illustrated by Janne Karlsson’s excellent drawings.

A lot of poetry collections deal with the embarrassing process of mourning the departed, who are often even pictured as residing in some bizarre “afterlife” with some mysterious and incoherent ontological status where they do all sorts of wacky shit with some bloke called Tod, or something like that.

Carsten’s book basically tells the father figure to fuck off, since said father was very much absent even before he went to the big absence, tending cows on the foothills of the golden mountain in the land of the null class.

Mourning is trite in poems, so it’s refreshing with a little honest celebration. This book does not celebrate the afterlife since there is none, and, what is more, most people wouldn’t deserve one.

Details about the book are here: http://www.wolfgangcarstens.com/enjoy-oblivion.html

Author bio:

David McLean is from Wales but has lived in Sweden since 1987. He lives there with his dog, Oscar, & his computers. In addition to various chapbooks, McLean is the author of seven full-length poetry collections. The last four of thse are from Oneiros Books and called NOBODY WANTS TO GO TO HEAVEN BUT EVERYBODY WANTS TO DIE (June, 2013), THINGS THE DEAD SAY (Feb, 2014), OF DESIRE AND THE LESION THAT IS THE EGO (May, 2014) & ZARA & THE GHOST OF GERTRUDE (Oct, 2014). More information about McLean can be found at his blogs http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/ &http://davidcmclean.wordpress.com/.