
Lumen
Tiffany Atkinson(Author)
Bloodaxe Books Ltd (Publisher)
Published on 25. February 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
80 pages
978-1-78037-530-4 (ISBN)
Description
How might poetry help us articulate the body in illness, in work, and in love? Tiffany Atkinson's fourth collection includes the prize-winning sequence 'Dolorimeter', which takes fragments of speech and found text from a hospital residency to pay homage to the inventiveness and humour of patients and staff in a series of meditations on the notion that pain resists language. Away from the wards, other poems consider the strangeness of the workplace and the embarrassing incursions of desire into everyday life, celebrating the ability of poetic language to lay awkwardness and uncertainty alongside unexpected openings and glimpses of revelation. A lumen is a unit of light, but also a channel or an opening inside the body; perhaps, in this collection, it may also serve as a metaphor for the work of the poem itself. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Reviews / Votes
A fresh, moving and brilliantly inventive book... some of the most striking, and touching, moments in the book come from its dry sense of humour... Atkinson sees the absurdity in everyday scenarios, but also their poetic potential. -- Sarah Howe * Poetry Wales, on So Many Moving Parts * The unexpected imagery always packs a punch... Visceral, and at times unsettling, this darkly iridescent verse is hardly comfort poetry - but that's the point. -- Juanita Coulson * The Lady, on So Many Moving Parts * This is poetry of acute aliveness... These new poems have the dynamic quality of robust, heightened speech... With these revelatory, refreshing poems, Atkinson conveys a many-faceted self, and frees up possibilities for the voice in poetry. -- Deryn Rees-Jones & Moniza Alvi * Poetry Book Society Bulletin, on So Many Moving Parts *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 7 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-530-4 (9781780375304)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Person
Tiffany Atkinson was born in Berlin in 1972 to an army family, and lived in Wales after moving to Cardiff to take a PhD in Critical Theory. After teaching at Aberystwyth University for some years, she is now Professor in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She won the Cardiff Academi International Poetry Competition in 2001. Her first collection, Kink and Particle (Seren, 2006), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award. Catulla et al (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), her second collection, was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2012 and was a TLS Book of the Year. Her third collection, So Many Moving Parts (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and won the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2015. She is the editor of a theoretical textbook, The Body: A Reader (2003), and has strong research interests in the medical humanities, especially the history of anatomy and representations of the body. Her fourth collection, Lumen (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), includes a sequence exploring representations of pain, illness and recovery - work that won the 2014 Medicine Unboxed Prize - and is Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is currently working on a series of critical essays about 'the poetics of embarrassment'.
Content
I Dolorimeter: 19 readings
11 /?d?l??r?m?t?/
12 Table 8.1: What makes patients anxious about gastroscopy
14 Heroin works
15 Found poem I
17 Accident & Emergency
19 Song of a pain
20 McGill Pain Questionnaire (annotated) please tick
21 Mr Broad's morphine
23 Neuropathy
25 SOCRATES
27 Found poem II
28 A Biblical pain & an aside on bedside manner
30 Pranidhana
31 A line from the doctor (annotated)
32 Clean windows
34 A bad cold
35 Signs of the body: longitudinal sample at tea break
36 Last
38 The smokers outside Bronglais hospital
II
41 You can't go there
50 The heart it's true looks jaunty
51 Walking with Virginia
52 In this class
53 Mantras
54 The department of small arts
55 Consent
56 Dear Sam
57 It is a very gracious hotel
58 Workshop
59 Panels
60 There is no sexual relation
61 Hymn
62 Dog speaks
63 Categories of experience c. 2016
64 The poem Kolkata
65 Wire-seller, Lal-Bazar
66 Kalighat
67 Yoga
68 Parable
69 Postscript
70 21 points for a feminist essay on ?lm
72 Burgeon
73 Neighbour
74 Experiment
76 Eggshell
79 Notes
11 /?d?l??r?m?t?/
12 Table 8.1: What makes patients anxious about gastroscopy
14 Heroin works
15 Found poem I
17 Accident & Emergency
19 Song of a pain
20 McGill Pain Questionnaire (annotated) please tick
21 Mr Broad's morphine
23 Neuropathy
25 SOCRATES
27 Found poem II
28 A Biblical pain & an aside on bedside manner
30 Pranidhana
31 A line from the doctor (annotated)
32 Clean windows
34 A bad cold
35 Signs of the body: longitudinal sample at tea break
36 Last
38 The smokers outside Bronglais hospital
II
41 You can't go there
50 The heart it's true looks jaunty
51 Walking with Virginia
52 In this class
53 Mantras
54 The department of small arts
55 Consent
56 Dear Sam
57 It is a very gracious hotel
58 Workshop
59 Panels
60 There is no sexual relation
61 Hymn
62 Dog speaks
63 Categories of experience c. 2016
64 The poem Kolkata
65 Wire-seller, Lal-Bazar
66 Kalighat
67 Yoga
68 Parable
69 Postscript
70 21 points for a feminist essay on ?lm
72 Burgeon
73 Neighbour
74 Experiment
76 Eggshell
79 Notes