Melanchrini E-Book

Maria Taylor

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 36

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Read a sample poem for free - just click the Extracts tab above. Shortlisted for the 2013 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. In her debut collection, Melanchrini, Maria Taylor's distinctive poetry slips fluently amidst the worlds and underworlds of classical mythology and modernity; between her own Greek Cypriot heritage and British urban upbringing; among betting shops, schools, bar-rooms and hospitals. Lively and ebullient, from moments of quirky humour to poignancy, these poems demonstrate a poet who isn't afraid to leap into the heart of circumstance and treasure what she finds there. Melanchrini finds personal histories at the kitchen table, tears in the soapsuds, and a moment's sensuality in the midst of a city market. Maria Taylor's poems are deceptively plucky; as entertaining as they are inventive and quietly determined. "Enjoyable, engaging, serious but unpretentious, confident and well-crafted, this is a debut collection that should attract attention – and ought to win Maria Taylor a lot of readers. Above all the book is full of life, of real lives. It has variety and surprise but is very clearly by one voice – a voice that it is good to listen to because it sees so much." Peter Sansom "Maria Taylor's poems sing with the extraordinary in the everyday, full of those moments where something or someone is briefly transformed: a woman takes a merman home; a dead Aunt's house becomes a museum where the main object is missing; the memory of morning coffee is full of birds' wings. The power of these poems is that they constantly invoke the unexpected, and the colours and textures of both times past and yet to come." Deborah Tyler-Bennett "This is a distinctive and assured collection of poems. The writing is at once clear-sighted and fully realised. In its mystery, precision and surprise, Melanchrini shows the truth of a powerful new writer." David Morley Maria Taylor is a Leicestershire-based poet. Her writing has been published in The North, The Guardian, the TLS, Staple and others.

Leseprobe

Melanchrini

Melanchrini

Maria Taylor

ISBN: 978-0-9570984-5-9

Scan QR code for further title information

Copyright © Maria Taylor 2012

Cover design © James Harringman at Studio Harringman 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Maria Taylor has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published June 2012 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in Britain by:

imprintdigital.net

Seychelles Farm,

Upton Pyne,

Exeter

EX5 5HY

www.imprintdigital.net

Maria Taylor was born in Worksop in 1978 of Greek Cypriot parents. At the age of six, her family moved to London. After studying at Warwick and Manchester she became a teacher of English and now lectures in Creative Writing at De Montfort University. She also co-ordinates events for the Leicestershire Arts group Crystal Clear Creators. Her poetry and reviews have been published in a variety of publications, such as The TLS and in various poetry magazines. She currently lives in the Midlands with her husband and twin daughters. Melanchrini is her debut collection of poetry.

For Rosie and Miranda

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Acknowledgments are due to the editors of the following publications in which some of these poems, or earlier versions of them, first appeared: Cake, The Guardian, Hearing Voices, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Iota, LeftLion, Litter, London Grip, Obsessed With Pipework, Staple, Tears in the Fence, The Coffee House, The Interpreter’s House, The Morning Star, The North and Under the Radar.

I am also grateful to the following people for their advice and support: Deborah Tyler-Bennett, David Morley, Roy Marshall, my colleagues Kathleen Bell, Will Buckingham, Simon Perril, and everyone at The Poetry Business. Special thanks go to Jane Commane and Matt Nunn for their invaluable editorial guidance and belief in this collection. I am also indebted to my family who gave me the time to pursue my writing and Jonathan for his unfailing support.

CONTENTS

I

At Her Grandmother’s Table

Thea

Asphodel, Revisited

A Day at the Races

Soapsud Island

She is Here

Larkin

Auntie

Mr. Hill

Eastfield

Outside

Kin

Aphrodite at the Beach

Little Acheron

Folk Tale

I Woke into Birth

An Unremarkable Wardrobe

Fable

Leaving

99/2000

Butcher

Par Avion

II

A History of Screaming

Here’s to You

According to Foxy

Three Things I Learnt in Church

Ealing Hospital, August 2000

Delicado

Half Term

Gull

Escaping the Singer

Theodosia

The Year We Don’t Talk About

My Uncle’s Creed

Getting Rid

Six weeks

The Language of Slamming Doors

III

The Summer of Controlled Experiments

On Being a Man Admired by Ernest Hemingway

Laying Down a Bone

Market Day

The Carnival of Souls

A Little Night Music

Merman

The Cleaning Lady of Elsinore

The Murderesses’ Cookbook

Supposition

In Love

Topography

The Peveril of the Peak

Kiss

Felling a Maiden

I

AT HER GRANDMOTHER’S TABLE

Melanchrini, do you remember the coral morning

when the pigeons gathered in the yard,

soft winged and purling the air with sound?

It was so early when you joined them at the table,

your grandmother spooning out coffee,

placing the mbriki on the stove. Your grandfather sat

hushed and stormless, his eyes filled with wings,

peristeria fluttering. The sun waited a little before rising.

A cockerel crowed daybreak and years went by;

now resting your full-grown elbows on the table

you wonder why it survives to feed you still.

A constant narcoleptic, a dead guest who slept

as in a fairy tale through other people’s lives.

Does this table remember the coffee drinkers

who sat by its side singing to a grandchild,

as they reached the grains at the base of their cups?

Melanchrini: dark-featured young woman; Mbriki: coffee pot used for making Greek/Turkish Coffee; Peristeria: pigeons

THEA

No one is surprised that her body is mostly broken

or that her bones show through the shrunken outfit

of old age, but there’s something of flint about her.

With the others gone she’s the only matriarch left.

We arrange chairs around her in a tight semi-circle.