ABANDONED ACCOUNTS:
Poems 2020-2021
(First Cut Poetry)
I’ve been writing poetry since before I could write. I would shout them out in alliterative, repetitive, rhyming couplets, and my mom would take dictation. Once I started writing, I wrote poems, short stories, comic books, fake newspapers.
In high school, I took to making zines publicly and writing poems privately. Everyone I looked up to was a poet of some fashion. From the smart sense of Danny Elfman and David Byrne to the gothic verse of Robert Smith and Andrew Eldritch, from the street knowledge of Ice-T and KRS-One to the hardcore chants of Kevin Seconds and Ian MacKaye, poetry was the process, the worded frame for the world. So, I started writing my own again, stilted little stanzas of teen longing and angst, mostly designed to make me seem deep to my friends and interesting to girls.
When the COVID-19 lockdown started, I found it difficult to focus on the larger projects I had in progress. In the months before, I’d started writing silly little poems about odd memories I had, tiny stories that didn’t fit anywhere else. I went back to those when I couldn’t think any larger. I eventually moved on to short stories and finally back to book-length writing, but not before I amassed a small collection of fitful misfit verse.
Praise:
“Beautifully written and refreshing to read: sincerity, subtle rhymes and half-rhymes, and vividly-rendered scenes.”
— Joshua Edwards, director, Canarium Books
“Rather than leave behind what so often fades in memory, the poems in Roy Christopher’s Abandoned Accounts hold onto each hypercolor detail even as ‘giant, plate-glass plans’ are made. But the real joy comes from the seemingly random and temporary connections described with sensuous turns of phrase. To borrow a line from ‘Body Language’, Christopher ‘betrays [our] best effort / to remain innocent, quiet, and disengaged.’”
— Rebecca Guess Cantor, author, The Other Half
“Roy Christopher’s Abandoned Accounts is an easy conversation in a breezy beer garden with an old friend you haven’t seen for years. Talk of music, memories, stolen moments, and philosophical musings share time with stories about life lived in cities across the country. The style is laidback, wandering, and effortless, just like any good conversation should be. Pull up a chair and shoot the shit, you’ll be glad you did.”
— Scott Wozniak, author, Shooting Gallery Vultures
“My favorite book of poetry since Lana Del Rey’s.”
— Peter Relic, author, Ping Pong on the Periodic Table
Press:
“Perfectly balanced prose. With the subtext, gravitas, and confidence of a master wordsmith. It’s a joy to read.” — Bristol Noir
“Roy Christopher is a true wordsmith, and as a reader, I was totally absorbed by his voice… Abandoned Accounts is a pleasure to read. I felt like I was in conversation with a friend, keenly hanging off every word as he shares stories from his life, laughing and crying and learning along the way.” — HLR, Treacle Heart
Interview with Roy Christopher on Treacle Heart.