Hello and welcome!
époque press is an independent publisher based between Brighton and Dublin established to promote and represent the very best in new literary talent.
Through a combination of our main publishing imprint and our online ezine we aim to bring inspirational and thought provoking work to a wider audience.
Our main imprint is seeking out new voices, authors who are producing high-quality literary fiction and who are looking for a partner to help realise their ambitions. Our commitment is to fully consider all submissions on literary merit alone and to provide a personal response.
Our ezine will showcase a combination of the written word, visual and aural art forms, bringing together artists working in different mediums to encourage and inspire new perspectives on specific themes.
For details of how to submit your work to us for consideration please follow the submissions guidelines and for all other enquiries please email info@epoquepress.com
Hello and welcome!
époque press is an independent publisher based between Brighton and Dublin established to promote and represent the very best in new literary talent.
Through a combination of our main publishing imprint and our online ezine we aim to bring inspirational and thought provoking work to a wider audience.
Our main imprint is seeking out new voices, authors who are producing high-quality literary fiction and who are looking for a partner to help realise their ambitions. Our commitment is to fully consider all submissions on literary merit alone and to provide a personal response.
Our ezine will showcase a combination of the written word, visual and aural art forms, bringing together artists working in different mediums to encourage and inspire new perspectives on specific themes.
For details of how to submit your work to us for consideration please follow the submissions guidelines and for all other enquiries please email info@epoquepress.com



époque press
pronounced: /epƏk/
definition: /time/era/period



époque press
pronounced: /epƏk/
definition: /time/era/period


Silence is closed from the outside like in a prison you dare not move forward you wait and death is everywhere the wound is sewn up like a mouth you dare not think and so here you are in a hole there is a madman in a house who is speaking to himself alone you don’t know his name you've dreamed of your father you don’t know his name too there’s a madman sitting in a room speaking to himself and the dream has fallen into my cup of coffee there is your madness writing on the glass of the mirror you don’t say nothing you don’t have any thoughts left inside of yourself and you have no madness either here we turn back we don’t dare to dream anymore we don’t have time left anymore for this and we don’t want to anymore anyway there has pieces of me scattered all over inside a painting like pieces of thoughts I’ve found your face in a closed book I’ve found your face folded in two I've found the memory of a moment that never had nothing to do with what I had experienced I’ve found the madness locked inside a mirror I put it in an empty glass it turns into water I drink the water and the water goes down through my body and my body becomes transparent I don’t remember what you look like anymore when I took you by the hand it went off from your body and I went away with your hand for my journey then I decided to put your hand in a box and I left the box on a table near my bed sometimes when I sleep your hand moves in the dark at night and makes a little noise there are also mice in the room that come and go and eat food that I leave for them on purpose and there is still the hand stirring sometimes in the box there is water in my body which makes my body transparent and outside it is so cold that the panes of the windows are frozen the cemeteries are frozen and so the dead can no longer move cannot go out for a walk nor can they sing and dance there at night, like lunatics.

You pick up your body like a dirty cloth but no one listens to you the sheet is a square placed on the table like the square of the window like the square of your madness the memory returns in the flame we are no more I’m afraid don’t say anything I’m afraid we are no more you go back there is the square of memory there are other silences the puddles open the bodies disappear we are nothing here someone has built a house and this house doesn’t exist and I don’t exist tomorrow either start over or go back live forget suffer I don’t know not I’m starting again the lamp goes out the day comes in there are crazy people who are playing a play there are crazy people no they are not crazy they are actors here you draw a face on the sheet of paper and this face represents someone you have forgotten a stranger whose facial features you still remember in a strange way as if forgetting and memory were one and the same thing but turned inside out like a glove no forgetting and memory are not one and the same thing they are two different things but united by the vocabulary of the obscure who does not don’t know how to stifle the silence comes forcefully I don’t know that’s not true shut up neither paper nor silence you say you don’t know you know you tell me you don’t know you know here’s silence the painting painted the wall painted the face painted by the sex by the blood it takes time not here you start all over again you don’t know here it all starts all over again you don’t know here I forget you too I don’t know anymore who I am I wasn’t born I didn’t go to meet the dead I didn’t come out of my madness I didn’t go to meet my own self so that I am not the one you believe that I am and all this has no importance in the end because there is only madness left and everything goes back to being back and to go back there and notp here is the silence of the past the lost night and so much and yet but not so much time remaining despite everything and which barely lost already remains forever and mine.

You can no longer think the dead are everywhere someone moves forward and dies and wanes away silence falls down you break into pieces but it is not you who's speaking to me in the dark it's your death you're scared of everything you won't go further away someone is swimming in an aquarium but it is not you there's a fish too but it is not you there's a man also swimming you don't say nothing anymore you go away the night is closed there are walls everywhere I'm scared I fall back someone speaks to me but it is not you it's not your father's shadow either but it is not you remain silent you won't say nothing go away forget me close the door turns the light off but it is not you I am scared to die my shadow stays glued to my back but it's not you you don't say anything anymore shut the door the aquarium is empty there are dead everywhere in the room the aquarium is slowly getting empty I'm afraid of you but it is not you don't tell me nothing anymore don't say anything anymore shut the door outside it's cold you lie down in your bed you dream you keep the lamp lit near you because you are afraid in the dark and I am also afraid in the dark you remember that as a child you were always in pain you remember that as a child you always suffered all the time in the darkness like in the daytime but it is not not you who's speaking to me in the night when I'm naked and nullified because with the years the pain nevertheless is still inside of me.
Ivan de Monbrison is a schizoid writer from France born in 1969 and affected by various types of mental disorders, he has published some poems in the past and he's mostly an autodidact.