You'll Never Be Anyone Else E-Book

Rachael Clyne

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 31

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Rachael Clyne's You'll Never Be Anyone Else presents a direct and assured voice, demanding that we think carefully about what it takes to reconcile being different. She advises the reader to 'Stop drinking the poison / labelled "Hate me." / It's that simple. I didn't say easy.' Clyne also has an alter-ego "Girl Golem" reminiscent of a superhero but based on the mythical man made from clay and spells to protect Jewish people from persecution. Through this empowering persona, Clyne opens up an exploration of Jewish and lesbian identity. Surveying attitudes in the present day and in the past, these poems explore migrant heritage, sexual identity, domestic violence and ageing. The stories of this collection are often poignant, like the retired tailor in 'Mr Shopping Trolley', who takes to shearing newspapers, so that his scissor fingers remain busy. Or in 'Leaving Odesa', the speaker revisits the prison where – under Tsarist law – her grandmother (even as an infant) had to serve out the remainder of her father's sentence after he died.Clyne's imagery is razor sharp in its precision, as she deftly weaves different poetic forms and wildly versatile subject matter, even interspersing Yiddish phrases, as part of her own unique poetic idiolect. Take the hilarious poem, 'Jew-a-lingo (Code-switching for Jews 1970 edition)' which emphasizes Jewish humour as a staple survival strategy. You'll Never Be Anyone Else offers a unique story of survival and empowerment told in spite of experiences of violence and prejudice – this from a poet who has spent a lifetime learning self-acceptance and as a psychotherapist helping others to do similar.  Treating even dark subjects with playful wit and colourful imagery, Clyne is a distinctive new voice with a powerful message about self-acceptance. "Rich, cinematic and sensuous." – Joelle Taylor 'With its impressive scope, ranging from the Holocaust, nuclear fallout, and immigration to domestic life and childhood, Rachael Clyne's Girl Golem thoughtfully explores our tactics for survival: in resistance, in the imagination, in mutual care. In these evocative, spirited poems, Clyne implicitly argues for faith in our own humanity and for the richness of difference.' - Carrie Etter 'Rachael Clyne's poetry, full of physicality and dramatic openness, accumulates a series of tensions within her Sixties free spirited identity and Jewish heritage. Attentive to narrative angle and migrant experience, she allows characters to emerge over generations showing how they mould into a new cultural identity. In its quiet and carefully crafted ways, Girl Golem shows the sweep of history and the importance of a tolerant county that offers salvation to those persecuted abroad.' - David Caddy 'Clyne's poems inhabit a shadowy and uncomfortable space where all is not as it seems – people become pieces of furniture and rooms have sinister personalities. A complex work of many layers – these thought provoking and deftly crafted poems are a playful and powerful examination of identity, sexuality, heritage and family dynamic. Clyne skilfully conveys a sense of disquiet and alienation, a sense of being other, both within the dysfunctions of the family, but also within the context of the wider world.' - Julia Webb Rachael Clyne is a psychotherapist from Glastonbury. Her prizewinning collection Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams) concerns human beings' relationship with nature, and she is a climate activist. Her pamphlet Girl Golem (4word) concerns her migrant background and sense of otherness. A frequent reader at poetry events and festivals, she has been published in magazines like Shearsman, The Rialto, and The Interpreter's House. 

Leseprobe

You’ll Never Be Anyone Else

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

Suite 6, 4 Derwen Road, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 1LH

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

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

© Rachael Clyne, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-78172-703-4

Ebook: 978-1-78172-704-1

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Books Council of Wales.

Cover painting: ‘The Session’ by Carole Windham

Printed in Bembo by Severn, Gloucester

Contents

Girl Golem

Sweety Pie

Three Piece Suite

Bedtime

Our Usual Walk

Tradition

Jew-a-lingo –

White/Other?

The SCHNOZZ

In Odesa’s Moldovanko District

Leaving Odesa

Mr Shopping Trolley

Siblings

What can we talk about…

I cradle my grief

Girl Golem finds a foster home

True Romance – Comics for Girls

Waiting for Bread

My fifteen-year-old hymen

Proposal

Diva

Ronnie Scott’s 1976

Susan Expects to Be Admired

Dateroo

A Man Threw Knives at Me

Girl Golem is Stranded in Marriage

Removing Her Face

Full Sail

Indoor Sport

Take the Medicine

Her Mind is Snagged

Girl Golem Wonders What to Wear

My Life as a Soap

Puzzled

Out of My Head

And Eat It

I Sketch Her as a Bird-headed Goddess

La Cuisine de L’Amour

Unfitting

Birls and Goys Come Out to Play

Power Cut

Girl Golem Looks Back

Tripp Reviews My Past

Dear Unborns

Be Grateful For Those Love Lessons

Tending the Wounded

Liberating the Senses

Seen

Because of Wet Grass

What I Asked of Life

Rewilding the Body

Sometime in the next ten years

You’ll never be anyone else

Acknowledgements

Girl Golem

The night they blew life into her, she clung

bat-like to the womb-wall. A girl golem,

a late bonus, before the final egg dropped.

She divided, multiplied, her hand-buds bloomed;

her tail vanished into its coccyx and the lub-dub

of her existence was bigger than her nascent head.

She was made as a keep-watch,

in case new nasties tried to take them away.

The family called her tchotchkele, their little cnadle,

said she helped to make up for lost numbers –

as if she could compensate for millions.

With x-ray eyes, she saw she was trapped

in a home for the deaf and blind, watched them

blunder into each other’s neuroses. Her task,

to hold up their world, be their assimilation ticket,

find a nice boy and mazel tov – grandchildren!

But she was a hotchpotch golem, a schmutter garment

that would never fit, trying to find answers

without a handbook. When she turned eighteen,

she walked away, went in search of her own kind,

tore their god from her mouth.

Golem: man made from clay and Kabbalistic spells, by rabbis to protect Jews from persecution. Truth: was written on his forehead and God’s name on his tongue. Tchotchkele (diminutive of tchotchke): a trinket, a cute child. Mazel tov: good luck. Cnadle: a dumpling. Schmutter: a rag.

Sweety Pie

We always wanted a girl,

but you weren’t the kiss-curl kind.

Grubby-kneed, nosepicker.

You tore the frocks grandma made.

You answered back. How rude.

You dimpled nicely though, when pressed

with a finger and grandma had big teeth.

She kept them in her pocket.

We told her to slip them in,

as you popped the oven on –

just a teeny shove.

Three Piece Suite

Mother, the rickety chair, teeters;

needs a wedge to steady her.

A chair from the Old Country,