priced out E-Book

Conor Cleary

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

Seitenzahl: 20

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

This pamphlet speaks, in an urbane and charmingly deadpan voice, to anyone who has ever had both an 'obsession with luxury resources' and the nagging feeling 'you've arrived at the counter of a shop / only to be told what you're carrying isn't legal tender'. The centrepiece of Priced Out is a tender and wry sequence of sonnets addressed 'to my mother at my age' which explores the 'fat promise' of the nineties economic bubble and its deflated aftermath. Despite their sharp historical awareness, Conor Cleary's poems live unmistakably in the twenty-first century, mapping the contours of a world of goofy Vines, flat-pack Christmas trees, and the barely-suppressed terror of economic precarity. Even as Cleary's speakers agonise over the difficulty of living with others — 'what if my gums / concealed big steel / fangs ... that were very / much part of me' — poem after poem reaffirms its commitment to human connection, working towards a calmly bemused acceptance of the dangers and wonders of contemporary existence.

Leseprobe

PRICEDOUT

OTHER TITLES FROM THE EMMA PRESS

POETRYPAMPHLETS

Paisley, by Rakhshan Rizwan

Elastic Glue, by Kathy Pimlott

Dear Friend(s), by Jeffery Sugarman

Poacher, by Lenni Sanders

SHORTSTORIES

First fox, by Leanne Radojkovich

Postcard Stories, by Jan Carson

The Secret Box, by Daina Tabūna

Once Upon A Time In Birmingham, by Louise Palfreyman

POETRYANTHOLOGIES

Some Cannot Be Caught: The Emma Press Book of Beasts

In Transit: Poems of Travel

Second Place Rosette: Poems about Britain

Everything That Can Happen: Poems about the Future

BOOKSFORCHILDREN

The Dog Who Found Sorrow, by Rūta Briede

The Head that Wears a Crown: Poems about Kings and Queens

The Girl Who Learned All the Languages Of The World,by Ieva Flamingo

Wain, by Rachel Plummer

The Adventures of Na Willa, by Reda Gaudiamo

POETRYANDARTSQUARES

AWOL, by John Fuller and Andrew Wynn Owen

Now You Can Look, by Julia Bird, illustrated by Anna Vaivare

The Goldfish, by Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi Degoul, illustrated by Emma Wright

THEEMMAPRESS

First published in the UK in 2019 by the Emma Press Ltd

Poems copyright © Conor Cleary 2019

Introduction copyright © Luke Kennard 2019

All rights reserved.

The right of Conor Cleary to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Edited by Richard O’Brien

Typeset by Emma Wright

ISBN 978-1-912915-25-5

EPUB ISBN 978-1-912915-26-2

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

Printed and bound in the UK by Impact Print & Design, Hereford.

The Emma Press

theemmapress.com

[email protected]

Birmingham, UK

INTRODUCTION

What do we read for when encountering a new voice for the first time? For some refreshing or distinctive sense of language, sure, and for form. In the case of this pamphlet we’d find a facility for excising punctuation when it counts to rival W. S. Merwin’s tragi-comic timing and masterful use of line-break; not to mention a bravura final sonnet sequence as accomplished as it is natural. But mostly we read for the same reason we always go to poetry: for some consolation, some insight into how we account for it all, in spite of feeling ill-at-ease or somehow inadequate most of the time.

priced out