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Friday’s Poem – A Birthmother’s Catechism (September 11, 1986)

imagined Sons Carrie Etter

This Friday’s poem, A Birthmother’s Catechism (September 11, 1986), comes from Carrie Etter’s collection Imagined Sons, A book of vivid, heartbreaking poems on the experience of giving up a child for adoption. Etter imagines the possible destinies for the child and presents us with various scenarios from the tragic to the absurd: a baker, a surfer, a rapist, even the olive in her Greek salad.  Dispersed among these narratives are the ‘Birthmother’s Catechisms’, These narratives provide numerous answers to persistent questions, How did you let him go? What is the anniversary of loss?

A Birthmother’s Catechism (September 11, 1986)

What is the anniversary of loss?

A national day of mourning

Really now, what is the anniversary of loss?

My mother and I watch TV well past her usual bedtime

What is the anniversary of loss?

Where the swan’s nest had been, widely scattered branches and some crumpled beer cans

What is the anniversary of loss?

Sometimes the melancholy arrives before the remembering

What is the anniversary of loss?

Some believe it is impossible to spend too much on the memorial

What is the anniversary of loss?

When I say sometimes the melancholy comes first, I know the body has its own memory

What is the anniversary of loss?

The wishbone snapped, and I clung to the smaller piece

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Friday Poem – Letter to my Optician

Loudness Judy Brown

This Friday’s poem, Letter to My Optician, comes from Judy Brown’s 2011 Forward shortlisted debut collection, Loudness. A straightforward manner and a gift for ironic humour belie the artful complexities and the exacting observations evident in her work.

Letter to My Optician

Dear Tom
I will soon feel you tightening the frames
from which you add or subtract lenses, hear
your breath as you peruse my aqueous humour through fluorescein. It was Christmas
morning when I started to yearn. Just then
the neighbours were galloping in inflatable horse-suits on Red Post Hill. I felt like crying
at the mum’s face when the three returned,
their novelty equines starting to deflate. I love
the way you look on the bright side, never mention my minus 14 vision, saying the backs of my eyes
are marvellous despite it all. I fell asleep
to my parents’ two televisions and the house’s sound effects – silvery CFCs chuckling
in a fridge, the kettle’s huff and click, thunder troubling the far side of the Rio Grande.
That night I dreamed, and I believe it malefic,
that the Autobank dispensed a Hong Kong
dollar note in substitution for a crisp twenty.
But I want to talk about food, how I added grated onion and garlic to the packet Paxo, the huge sweetbready joy of the Holland & Barrett
chocolate brazils, how we compared two
types of Stilton and ate the better oatcakes.
I could go on, but I’ll see you soon, and
your ziggurat of dwindling capitals, your machine for testing if parts of the retina have started
to flunk. I hope I have not fallen farther
into the red, and that things will be different
from how they have been for some time.

Judy will be reading  at The Continental in Preston tonight at 7:30pm. Tickets are  £4.00 on the door with proceeds going to Cancer Research UK. The Continental, South Meadow Lane, Preston, Lancashire PR1 8JP // Tel: 01772 499425 for reservations and event tickets.

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Pascale Petit Shortlisted for the 2014 TS Eliot Prize

Pascale Petit

Pascale Petit has been shortlisted for the 2014 TS Eliot Prize for the fourth time with her collection Fauverie, A collection every bit as vivid and emotive as the art of the Fauves that the title evokes.

Described as ‘the prize most poets want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion, former Poet Laureate) and ‘the world’s top poetry award’ (Irish Independent), the TS Eliot prize is awarded to the author of the best new collection of poetry published in the UK and Ireland each year.

Pascale has previously been shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize with her earlier collections The Zoo Father (2001, Seren), The Huntress (2005, Seren) and What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo (2010, Seren).

Pascale will be reading alongside ten fellow shortlisted poets including Fiona Benson, Ruth Padel and Michael Longley at the Southbank Center’s Royal Festival Hall on 11th January, with the winner of the £20,000 prize being announced at an awards ceremony on the 12 January 2015.

Helen Dunmore will chair the judging panel for the 2014 prize alongside Sean Borodale and Fiona Sampson.

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Pascale Petit Shortlisted for the 2014 TS Eliot Prize

Pascale Petit has been shortlisted for the 2014 TS Eliot Prize for the fourth time with her collection Fauverie, A collection every bit as vivid and emotive as the art of the Fauves that the title evokes.
Described as ‘the prize most poets want to win’ (Sir Andrew Motion, then Poet Laureate) and ‘the world’s top poetry award’ (Irish Independent), the TS Eliot prize is awarded to the author of the best new collection of poetry published in the UK and Ireland each year.
Pascale has previously been shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize with her earlier collections The Zoo Father (2001, Seren), The Huntress (2005, Seren) and What the Water Gave Me: Poems after Frida Kahlo (2010, Seren).
Pascale will be reading alongside ten fellow shortlisted poets including Fiona Benson, Ruth Padel and Michael Longley at the Southbank Center’s Royal Festival Hall on 11th January, with the winner of the £20,000 prize being announced at an awards ceremony on the 12 January 2015.
Helen Dunmore will chair the judging panel for the 2014 prize alongside Sean Borodale and Fiona Sampson.

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Jaki McCarrick Longlisted for the Irish Laureate Award

The Scattering author, Jacki McCarrick has been longlisted for the first Irish Laureate Award. Jaki is one of thirty four Irish writers to be nominated for the award and she sits on the longlist alongside names such as Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle, Donal Ryan and Eimear McBride

Launched by the Arts Council in summer 2014, the €150,000 award aims to find a writer who has made a significant contribution to Irish literature and with an internationally recognised body of work.

Jaki is an award winning playwright and short story writer. Her first collection of short stories, The Scattering, a series of skillfully crafted stories focusing on borders, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill award. Her plays have won numerous awards including SCDA National playwriting competition and the Papatango New Writers Award.

Nominations were made by 119 organisations and individuals, with each providing a reason for their selection. Nominations came from book clubs, bookshops, arts organisations, poets, playwrights and libraries.

The first Irish Laureate for Fiction will be announced in January 2015 and the recipient is expected to be an author that has had “a considerably positive impact on readers” and “demonstrated commitment to engaging with the public, the media and the literary sector”.

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Jaki McCarrick Longlisted for the Irish Laureate Award

The Scattering author, Jacki McCarrick has been longlisted for the first Irish Laureate Award. Jaki is one of thirty four Irish writers to be nominated for the award and she sits on the longlist alongside names such as Anne Enright, Roddy Doyle, Donal Ryan and Eimear McBride.
Launched by the Arts Council in summer 2014, the €150,000 award aims to find a writer who has made a significant contribution to Irish literature and with an internationally recognised body of work.
Jaki is an award winning playwright and short story writer. Her first collection of short stories, The Scattering, a series of skillfully crafted stories focusing on borders, was shortlisted for the Edge Hill award. Her plays have won numerous awards including SCDA National playwriting competition and the Papatango New Writers Award.
Nominations were made by 119 organisations and individuals, with each providing a reason for their selection. Nominations came from book clubs, bookshops, arts organisations, poets, playwrights and libraries.
The first Irish Laureate for Fiction will be announced in January 2015 and the recipient is expected to be an author that has had “a considerably positive impact on readers” and “demonstrated commitment to engaging with the public, the media and the literary sector”.

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Friday Poem – There’s no such thing as pandas

What if I told you that pandas weren’t real? That they were just people in suits? This Friday’s poem, There’s no such thing as pandas, taken from Katherine Stansfields collection Playing House, suggests just that. A concise wit, a distinct voice and an unsettling view of the domestic characterise these poems whose subjects are the ordinary as viewed through the author’s satirical yet sympathetic eye.

There’s no such thing as pandas

I cut my teeth on Newsround where ‘And finally’
meant pandas: pandas on planes, panda love
at London Zoo, the Queen unveils a new panda.
There was something about them, even then.
Those tricks-of-a-hypnotist eyes. The big pads
moving like hands. Were they shoes
inside the feet? I wasn’t sure until I saw
the sneezing baby make her mother
lurch in shock on YouTube. Then I knew:
pandas are just people in suits, having us on.

Don’t miss Katherine reading at the Aberystwyth Arts Center bookshop on Thursday 23rd October at 6:30pm. Find out more.

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Win a signed Sugar Hall paperback

To celebrate the launch of the paperback edition of Sugar Hall, we’re giving away three copies signed by the author, Tiffany Murray.

To be in with a chance all you have to do is tweet us your most spine tingling, heart stopping, goose bump raising ghost stories in 140 characters or less using the hashtag #SugarHall.

We’ll be retweeting the ones that give us nightmares and Tiffany will pick the winners on Halloween.

To get you started here’s ours:
“I told you there are strange noises here didn’t I? Ma say’s it’s the forest behind us, but it isn’t because trees don’t scream…”