KM
Dersley’s articles and poems have been appearing in
magazines since 1974. The magazines include Poetry
Review, London Magazine, The Rialto, Ambit,
Scratch, The Wide Skirt, The Echo Room, South,
Aesthetica, Lateral Moves and Purple Patch. He has performed his work in London, Cambridge, Colchester, Chelmsford, at Dulwich College and Tonbridge School
and twice at the Wessex Festival, including 1999's event
where he gave a reading and a talk on Charles Bukowski. The
Gentle Art of Camouflage (prose poems, Fetish Books
1980)
The
working-world record includes twelve years as a hospital Theatre Orderly
plus stints as a postal clerk, bank clerk,
lorry driver's mate, cleaner and busker. For the last seventeen
years he has been a Data Input and Stock Assistant with the local County
Council.
Writing in
Tears in the Fence 17 about Clapgate Terraces,
James Sale said, 'It has the full shock value that derives from
thinking: it is not about images, although images feature; it is
not about poetry, although poetry features as a pretty important
subject--it is about life and about the mind of KM Dersley coming
to grips with it. And a very tenacious grip it is; Dersley
is obsessive, and this makes for a kind of greatness....'
There is now a band called the Derz, which features, along with KMD, Joan Jerome on violin, tambourine and vocals.
The
Steep Descent to Paradise (stories, articles, letters,
Appliance Books 1981)
Opportunity
Knocks (stories, articles, Stepping Stone Books 1983)
Pediments
Above (poems, Appliance Books 1993)
Clapgate
Terraces (poems, Appliance Books 1995)
Fugitive
Days (poems, Redbeck Press 1998)
Sketches by Derz (articles and fiction, Appliance Books 2001)
Scribbles & SQUIBS (poems, Appliance Books 2003)
Between the Alleyways at the World's Fair (poems, Feel Free Press 2004)
Paranoid in Paradise (poems, Appliance Books 2007)
Retrospective Forecasts (poems, Kendra Steiner Editions 2007)