Poetry
Category: Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 57
ISBN: 9781781727034
Publication date: April 24, 2023
Price: £9.99
Category: Individual Collections, Poetry
Number of pages: 72
ISBN: 9781781727041
Publication date: April 24, 2023
Price: £7.99
Out of stock
“Rich, cinematic and sensuous.” – Joelle Taylor
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 emphasises 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.
Rachael Clyne
Rachael Clyne from Glastonbury, is widely published in journals and anthologies. Her prizewinning collection, Singing at the Bone Tree (Indigo Dreams), concerns our broken connection with nature. Her pamphlet, Girl Golem (4word.org), explores her Jewish migrant heritage and sense of otherness. Her new collection, You’ll Never Be Anyone Else, expands on her themes of identity and otherness to include childhood, relationships, sexual orientation and ageing.
Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine
“A mosaic of identities, of invigorating reintegration, and of blind alleys explored on route to a kind of wholeness, Rachael Clyne’s wonderful new collection for Seren brazenly unfastens the straitjacket of its title… Clyne is brave to venture into territory that is at once unsettling and redolent of formative control, and she is astonishingly insightful as to the prevalence of complacent racism, which is less meaningful to those who are not victims of it… this poet is never less than honest, or viscerally frank, in a realm of antithesis and confusion of identity. An open-hearted paean to tolerance, Clyne’s poems encourage a belief in the polychromatic prism of culture and taste in a landscape that refuses to keep up… In fact, any sense of resolution resides in an acceptance of not knowing the answers, of celebrating, instead, our place in the moment.”
The Yorkshire Times
“These poems embrace the risky, sensuous and camp, holding up a bulb-lined mirror to the scripts the world tries to impose. Layers of personal, familial and cultural history emerge, through vibrant metaphor and formal flamboyance. Clyne’s work traces the prickle of overt and covert discrimination, whilst celebrating the self-liberation performance can offer, both on and beyond the page.”
Caleb Parkin
“This is a touching and potent body of work where we see a girl grow into a woman through a series of masked and costumed performances, before finally having the courage to be herself. I admire the honesty and wit of these poems, how Clyne leads us through her life, and has the skill to give darkness a shimmer with a spirited raise of the eyebrow.”
Helen Ivory
“Take a front row seat in Clyne’s very particular theatre of life; witness the tale of a woman’s self-discovery and self-acceptance in a world where the odds are stacked against her. Meditations on history, culture, identity and mortality offer up a simultaneously witty, discomfiting and uplifting read.”
Jacqueline Saphra
