Mildly Erotic Verse E-Book

• Herausgeber: The Emma Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: The Emma Press Poetry Anthologies
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 66

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Aren't mildly erotic things the most erotic of all? Sometimes eroticism isn't just about sex – it can be about anticipation, desire, intimacy and romance. It can be wild, hilarious, beautiful and alarming, and it may be hard to define but you'll know it when you see it. Mildly Erotic Verse skips the mechanics and dives straight into the emotional core of sex, celebrating the diversity and eccentricity of human sexuality.

Leseprobe

MILDLYEROTICVERSE

REVIEWSFORTHE 1STEDITIONOFMILDLYEROTICVERSE

‘A collection that can be dipped in and out of when one is need of distraction and diversion, rather than the physical relief that accompanies one-handed reads.

Alisande Fitzsimons, For Books’ Sake

‘Every poem in this collection is entirely genuine in its emotion; nothing is overblown, overdressed, no puddings over-egged.’

Alex Campbell, Sabotage Reviews

REVIEWSFORTHE 2NDEDITIONOFMILDLYEROTICVERSE

‘In the expanded edition of Mildly Erotic Verse, it’s immediately obvious that this love poetry is as far as possible from the wistful odes and idealised damsels of the traditional lustful troubadour. In particular, women are not merely the object of a male poet’s sighing ardour; their voices come through louder than ever, articulating powerful and complex romantic experiences.’

Charlotte Runcie, Daily Telegraph

‘Mildly Erotic Verse shows that humour and sensuality are not mutually exclusive. It brings to light the manifold ways sexuality can be experienced and expressed, whether with a partner or alone, real or imagined.’

Emma-Lee Davidson

OTHERTITLESFROMTHEEMMAPRESS

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Slow Things: Poems about Slow Things

The Emma Press Anthology of Age

Urban Myths and Legends: Poems about Transformations

The Emma Press Anthology of the Sea

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The Emma Press Anthology of Aunts

PROSEPAMPHLETS

Postcard Stories, by Jan Carson

First fox, by Leanne Radojkovich

The Secret Box, by Daina Tabūna

Me and My Cameras, by Malachi O’Doherty

POETRYPAMPHLETS

Dragonish, by Emma Simon

Pisanki, by Zosia Kuczyńska

Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real, by Padraig Regan

Paisley, by Rakhshan Rizwan

POETRYBOOKSFORCHILDREN

Falling Out of the Sky: Poems about Myths and Monsters

Watcher of the Skies: Poems about Space and Aliens

Moon Juice, by Kate Wakeling

The Noisy Classroom, by Ieva Flamingo

THEEMMAPRESSPICKS

DISSOLVE to: L.A., by James Trevelyan

The Dragon and The Bomb, by Andrew Wynn Owen

Meat Songs, by Jack Nicholls

Birmingham Jazz Incarnation, by Simon Turner

Bezdelki, by Carol Rumens

THEEMMAPRESS

First published in Great Britain in 2016 by the Emma Press Ltd

Reprinted in 2017

This is the expanded second edition of The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse (ISBN 978-0-9574596-2-5), which was first published in 2013. It features 17 of the original poems in addition to 33 new poems.

Poems copyright © individual copyright holders 2016Selection copyright © Rachel Piercey and Emma Wright 2016Illustrations and introduction copyright © Emma Wright 2016

All rights reserved.

The right of Rachel Piercey and Emma Wright to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978-1-910139-34-9

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Imprint Digital, Exeter.

The Emma Press

theemmapress.com

[email protected]

Birmingham, UK

CONTENTS

Foreword by Emma Wright

Tight Dress, by Amy Key

Glamour, by Jon Stone

The boy who loved welding, by Holly Magill

Avventura, by Mary Gilonne

How to Kiss, by Robert Hamberger

Have you imagined having sex with me? by Emma Reay

Stars, Flowers, Grass and Us, by Isobel Dixon

A well-tempered keyboard, by Helen Clare

Phosphorescence, by Victoria Gatehouse

The Gift, by Alan Buckley

Pinkie Minimus, by Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi

Shave, by Ramona Herdman

The Globemakers, by Sophia Blackwell

My Love, the Shetland Trowie, by Stephanie Green

Hare, by Hugh Dunkerley

Office Hour, by Vasiliki Albedo Bennu

He liked her to talk about other women’s breasts, by Natalie Shaw

Contagion, by Victoria Kennefick

how we taste, by Laura McKee

Prize, by Jerrold Yam

Their letters, by Di Slaney

The Frozen Man, by Jacqueline Saphra

Yours truly, Stephen Dedalus, by Camille Ralphs

The Student, by Kirsten Irving

Helen of Troy in the Bath, by Kelley Swain

Radiocarbon Dating, by Anja Konig

Fairy Tale, by Lawrence Schimel

The best lovers, by Annie Brechin

the jackal and the moon, by Sara-Mae Tuson

Maine Man, by Angela Kirby

Down the Aisle, by Jo Brandon

Bananaphagy, by Hilaire

Come With Me, by Ruth Stacey

Casserole, by Jamie Baxter

Cool change before midnight, by Kristen Roberts

To September, from June, by Mel Denham

Birch, by Ruth Wiggins

Critical Reading, by Steve Nash

Rhyming Rita and Silver Sam, by Lynn Hoffman

Press Play, by Julia Bird

The Horse of My Love, by Nicola Warwick

photographs from our holiday in bed, by Ali Lewis

I Went to a Parthenogenesis Party and Met an Aphid, by James Horrocks

Bluebells, by Ali Thurm

Mad flash, by Nisha Bhakoo

Second Circle, by Stephen Sexton

Magician’s Assistant, by Richard O’Brien

Auto-Pornographia, by Amy McCauley

Cigarettes, by George David Clark

Layers, by Fiona Moore

Acknowledgements

About the editors

About the poets

About the Emma Press

Also from the Emma Press

FOREWORDFOREXPANDED 2NDEDITION

When Rachel and I first started collecting mildly erotic poetry in 2013, the Emma Press was really very new and unknown. We had a decent number of submissions and were able to chose twenty-three poems which I still really love, but the resulting book – The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse – was extremely slim, even with the extra-thick paper I cunningly had it printed on.

Our original impulse in creating the book was to showcase and celebrate the diversity of human erotic experiences, so when we reached the end of our second print run of The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse it occurred to us that we might revisit our first bestseller and see what we could do with a few more years to our name.

Excitingly, the response to our call for submissions was so great that we were able to double the number of poems in the book, bringing extra shades (fifty?) of intimacy into the collection. There may now be more public discourse around desire, but I still believe – as I said in my introduction to the first edition – that society’s attitude towards sex has a long way to go. I hope that the second edition of Mildly Erotic Verse will be a valuable contribution to this ongoing discussion.

Emma WrightBIRMINGHAM

January 2016

INTRODUCTIONTO 1STEDITION

I was pretty excited when erotic literature hit the bestseller charts in 2011. It felt like another aspect of human sexuality had entered the mainstream, as thousands of people ruled that there was nothing shameful about wanting to read about sex and different sexual practices, even in public.

But it annoyed me that many of these bestsellers weren’t terribly erotic. They contained lashings of sex and were enjoyable romances, but they didn’t strike me as genuinely sexy and thrilling, and I wondered if their success was contributing to the misinterpretation of “eroticism” as equivalent with “sex”. This distinction between “Popular Erotica” and “Genuinely Erotic Fiction” might seem snobby or a matter of personal opinion, but when a society’s attitude towards sex is still a work in progress it feels important to assert the individual identity of eroticism and understand it as a much broader, looser concept than sex, for all that they have in common.

My instinct is that eroticism exists around the edges of sex, in the anticipation and desire and in memories and associations. It exists on both cerebral and carnal levels, and it’s hard to define because each person’s sense of it is utterly unique. It can be wild, hilarious, beautiful and alarming; difficult to describe but the easiest thing to spot once you know what you’re looking for – maybe a tiny leap in the stomach or a burst of exclamation marks in the brain.