There is (still) love here - Dean Atta - E-Book

There is (still) love here E-Book

Dean Atta

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Beschreibung

There is (still) love here, the compelling new collection of poetry by Dean Atta, is a personal and powerful exploration of relationships, love and loss, encompassing LGBTQ+ and Black history, Greek Cypriot heritage, pride and identity, dislocation and belonging.Atta's tender, precisely-crafted and generous poems seek consolation and affirmation. These are poems as an antidote for challenging times, whether facing prejudice or the challenges of the pandemic, experiencing grief or recovering from heartbreak. Here, we encounter blue feelings and homesickness, things lost in translation and the pressures of the many roles we play in life. We also find the recipes of home, gifts and giving, the togetherness of community and connection to help us to heal. There is (still) love here - and journeys towards forgiveness, acceptance, queer joy and the power to unapologetically be yourself and fully embrace who you are.

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There is (still) love here

There is (still) love here

Dean Atta

ISBN: 978-1913437503

eISBN: 978-1913437510

Copyright © Dean Atta, 2022.

Cover artwork: ‘Falling Deeper’ © Sanna Räsänen, 2022.

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.

Dean Atta has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published September 2022 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in the United Kingdom by:

Imprint Digital

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

for Faye

Contents

On Days When

How to be a Poet

Five Litres of Blue

Signet

The Making

Writer in Residence

What Do You See?

Stony Eyes of History

British Citizenship Test

The Door

No Ascension

Preparing for the Worst

Fragments of Faye

Lost in Translation

Pulse

Stuck in the Mud

Two Black Boys in Paradise

What I Didn’t Know Before

Circassian Circle

Category Is Books

Yours and Mine

Letter to London

Strawberry Thief

On Giving

Four Plantains in a One-Pound Bowl

How to Make Louvi

Translate This Sentence

Στο τραπέζι µε την αγάπη µου(At the table with my love)

Empathy

Broken Bench

No Headspace

Nightshift

Beachcombing at Night

Sensing Something is Wrong

A Letter to the Man in the Next Room

Tenement

Mundane Magic

When

I Never Asked for Another City

Dear Brokenhearted Man

Murmuration (Faye as a Flock of Starlings)

Acknowledgements and Thanks

About the author and this book

On Days When

you feel like a wilting garden,

gather yourself, roll up your lawn,

bouquet your flowers,

embrace your weeds.

You are a wild thing playing

at being tame.

You are rich with life beneath

 the surface.

You don’t have to show leaf

and petal to be living.

You are soil and insect and root.

How to be a Poet

When your mum loves you unconditionally, say,

Mother, your love is so cliché.

Seek rejection.

Relate to roadkill. Let life crash into you.

Embrace the pain of others when you have none of your own.

Write poems on your phone.

Be at one with technology and at odds with nature.

Be a natural disaster but blame society.

Be a contradiction.

Take your time to rush.

Hurry up and wait.

Do average things but expect to be great.

Look at things differently.

Close your eyes and feel.

Stand out in the sun and pretend to be a flower.

See all people as flowers.

Try and fail to be the sun.

Blame your mum.

Blame your dad.

Blame everything you never had.

Don’t rhyme without reason.

Don’t hang on to the pencil shavings of life.

Refuse to stay sharp, keep writing.

Five Litres of Blue

I used to think the blood in this body

was five litres of blue,

that only when I bled was it red.

I looked it up and found out

the blue of our veins is a trick of the light.

Human blood is always red,

sometimes crimson, sometimes bright.

Where do blue feelings come from?

I could be at the table with family: blue.

In a nightclub with friends: blue.

In the arms of a lover: blue.

Writing this poem for you: I used to

think of writing as some kind of bleeding.

That colour people stop and notice,

red of accidents, homicide or self-harm.

I used to think the blood in this body

was five litres of blue. How else

could I explain blue feelings to you?

Signet

Your engraved ring reads D.M.P.

if I hadn’t changed my surname

this would have been left to me

we are making each other pay

for an inherited debt

your brother                  my father

the push and pull between us

an elastic band in the hands of a restless student

we have grown with this tension

yet never snapped back at each other

and without fail