Improvised Explosive Device

Arji Manuelpillai

• Publisher: Penned In The Margins
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781913850081
• eBook ISBN: 9781913850166
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Improvised Explosive Device is a startlingly innovative exploration of extremism, hate crime and violence by poet Arji Manuelpillai. In this powerful and unsettling first collection, Manuelpillai presents a vision of the contemporary haunted by Melville's image of the whale – the terror beneath the surface of the sea. His uncompromising focus on violence is laced with gallows humour and the surreal, framed against the mundane detritus of modern life: two boys playing Mortal Kombat; a field of old trainers; the lonely glare of laptop light; a suspicious looking package in the back seat of a van.

The poems in Improvised Explosive Device emerged through research and interviews with academics, sociologists, and former members of extremist groups and their families – from the English Defence League and the National Front to ISIS and the Tamil Tigers. These complex, unnerving texts ask a series of important questions. What drives a person to commit a radical act of violence? How is that violence mediated through screens and social media? And how does the British government police marginalised groups? Improvised Explosive Device is a brave, surprising and risk-taking book; it will change the way you look at the world.

"Refusing glib analysis and easy answers, Improvised Explosive Device is a work of radical empathy, fuelled by honesty and compassion, both for those stirred to violence against minorities, and those who suffer from it." Rishi Dastidar

"The project of Arji Manuelpillai's Improvised Explosive Device leans into the mighty disciplines of poetry, sociology, and reportage to formulate an arresting debut which contests the ways we're conditioned to internalise notions of terrorism, nationalism and belonging...a bold and startling new work." Anthony Anaxagorou

Table of contents

• Cover
• Improvised Explosive Device
• Also by Arji Manuelpillai
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Portrait of a Man Fitting into a Fake Suicide Vest
• Rapid Eye Movement
• The Mother
• Tusk
• After the Prime Minister’s Statement
• Mistaken Identity
• 188 to Greenwich
• Let’s Just Call Them Butterflies
• Methods of Fitting In
• You Must Have Misheard Him
• The Cameraman
• Her Love is a Red Rose
• Mouse
• Minutes After the Attack
• Way Back
• Ways of Being Heard
• I was just LIVE-fed two young men knife-fighting in Greenwich
• Thaipusam
• Tank
• The Expendables
• Don’t take this the wrong way but
• If You Don’t Like It, Leave
• I Love You Man
• Youtube.com/watch?v=MkqLs6ZX_TQ (Please do not watch this)
• While Trying the Crème Brûlée
• Nothing British
• The Man Who Played Records to Aliens
• The Calling
• This Is Not an IED
• Hate
• Mortal Kombat
• PREVENT
• Einstein said
• Suspicious-looking Individual
• 44 Ways to Make and Kill a Terrorist
• House, Bus Stop, Bus, Driver
• True Lies
• Salad
• A Decent Pair of Nikes
• A Cigarette Tastes Better When the House is Full
• Days Before
• Magic Eye
• A Year On
• Objects Increase Their Distance at Ever-increasing Speeds
• Acknowledgements