Montgomery robert

portrait by FABIO PALEARI
interview by XERXES COOK

HAMMERSMITH POEM / MALEVICH PAINTING (MODERNISM ISN’T A STYLE), 2017

XERXES COOK — You’ve pasted your poetry atop advertising billboards in cities across Europe, subverting public space in a manner akin to that of the Situationists in the 1960s. If an advertiser’s agenda is to sell a product, what is yours?

ROBERT MONTGOMERY — It’s a kind of therapy against the materialism of the language, which dominates advertising as well as the news media — the two particular types of “dominant speech,” as Roland Barthes would say. They only deal with the material self, which is a very small area of our whole being. Not with the soul, which is infinitely more complex. Everyone has their own dream universe inside of them, and everyone is connected to ancient and future magic. [Laughs]

XERXES COOK — What…