Museum of Ice Cream
Published on 22. April 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
64 pages
978-1-78037-545-8 (ISBN)
Description
Jenna Clake's Museum of Ice Cream is part simulation, part internal monologue, part attempt to reach out. An uncanny examination of objects, scenes, and flavours, these poems explore how food can connect and divide, can feel isolating and terrifying: public and private jars of peanut butter, a tray of lemons, unfurling chocolate bar wrappers. In turning to television, childhood films, and social media accounts, her collection investigates how to reveal and conceal, what it means to have a secret, to be intimate, to navigate something that should be natural, but feels sickly, sour, and wrong. Museum of Ice Cream is Jenna Clake's second collection, following her debut Fortune Cookie (2017), winner of an Eric Gregory Award and the Melita Hume Poetry Prize, which was also shortlisted for a Somerset Maugham Award.
Reviews / Votes
The trajectory between Clake's debut collection and Museum of Ice Cream is logical but still beautifully unexpected: the linguistic precision and surreal swerves are stronger than ever, but something deepens and resonates as the voice transitions from instructive, to consoling, to lost, often within the same stanza. These are poems of such sadness and grace; fear transfigured by a powerful imagination into endlessly explorable terrains. Not so much to guide as to reach out to you in your own maze of confusion, wonder and dread; which is all I ever really ask of poetry. -- Luke KennardMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 8 mm
Weight
113 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-545-8 (9781780375458)
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
Jenna Clake was born in Staffordshire in 1992. Her debut collection of poetry, Fortune Cookie, won the Melita Hume prize in 2016, and was published in 2017 by Eyewear. It received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2018, and was shortlisted for a Somerset Maugham Award in the same year. Her pamphlet of prose poems, CLAKE/ Interview for, was published by Verve Poetry Press in 2018, and was featured as a spring pamphlet in the Poetry Book Society Bulletin in 2019. She was shortlisted for the inaugural Rebecca Swift Women Poets' Prize, commended in the University of Hertfordshire Single Poem Prize, and placed second in the Newcastle Poetry Prize in 2018. Her second full collection, Museum of Ice Cream, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2021. Jenna is writer in residence for ORCA, writing on cetacean conservation, marine mammals, and whale watching. Her poetry criticism has appeared in Poetry London, The Poetry School, The Compass and The Poetry Review. She has a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Birmingham and lectures at Teesside University.
Content
11 Cloud Appreciation Society
12 I would die for you in the best way possible
13 Wooden doll, total being
14 Immersive experience of all the things I want for myself (that are bad for me)
16 Vixen
17 How much longer until I get this out?
18 I wanted Agent Cooper to save my life
20 Sponge cake, pound cake, gateau
21 there is no marine snow here, my friend
22 Self-portrait as the opening of a window on a hot morning
23 Organisational Skills for the Hungry
26 Milk, Strawberry, Sugar
27 The omission is meaningless
28 M's letters to tumblr
32 Like other women
33 I hid ?sh in my pockets and forgot about it for days
34 Siesta for Olivia
36 All our problems began with a woman eating
37 On feeling my eggshell heart break
38 Jen's Sweet Shop
40 i am driving for hours tonight; i didn't bring snacks
41 I could cry, yes, I could
42 It's no longer about us, it's got to be about me
44 Elegy for Balto from the Bottom of a Frozen Lake
46 Quayside of Dogs
47 Self-portrait as a pink dressing room
49 Bread, orange, aura
50 Oyster Delight
52 if you're near the park, come ?nd me, i'm having a picnic
53 Still life of newspapers folded on a bistro set
54 Sunday roast on a dark wood table
56 I try to make sense of things by standing very close to windows
58 Tell me if you prefer your carrots as sticks or coins and I'll always remember
59 Garments I have dreamed of but will
12 I would die for you in the best way possible
13 Wooden doll, total being
14 Immersive experience of all the things I want for myself (that are bad for me)
16 Vixen
17 How much longer until I get this out?
18 I wanted Agent Cooper to save my life
20 Sponge cake, pound cake, gateau
21 there is no marine snow here, my friend
22 Self-portrait as the opening of a window on a hot morning
23 Organisational Skills for the Hungry
26 Milk, Strawberry, Sugar
27 The omission is meaningless
28 M's letters to tumblr
32 Like other women
33 I hid ?sh in my pockets and forgot about it for days
34 Siesta for Olivia
36 All our problems began with a woman eating
37 On feeling my eggshell heart break
38 Jen's Sweet Shop
40 i am driving for hours tonight; i didn't bring snacks
41 I could cry, yes, I could
42 It's no longer about us, it's got to be about me
44 Elegy for Balto from the Bottom of a Frozen Lake
46 Quayside of Dogs
47 Self-portrait as a pink dressing room
49 Bread, orange, aura
50 Oyster Delight
52 if you're near the park, come ?nd me, i'm having a picnic
53 Still life of newspapers folded on a bistro set
54 Sunday roast on a dark wood table
56 I try to make sense of things by standing very close to windows
58 Tell me if you prefer your carrots as sticks or coins and I'll always remember
59 Garments I have dreamed of but will