
Never Never Never Come Back
Kirsten Irving(Author)
Salt Publishing
Will be published approx. on 15. February 2018
Book
Paperback/Softback
80 pages
978-1-78463-156-7 (ISBN)
Description
Don't go over the hill, or look too long into the well, or go carousing with strangers, or you'll never never never never come back. With the haunting quality of nursery rhymes and the complexity of a dark and smoky wine, these poems brood on absence and abandonment, outcasts and anomalies, monstrosity and mistakes.
At the heart of the collection are a suite of tightly focused, often impressionistic character studies ranging from cannibals to schoolgirls, but Irving also finds space in the shadows for desperate love songs to pilots and robots, satiric odes to tyrants and deft engagements with popular and literary culture. Whether turning the features of a pinball table into an emotional debris field or recounting unnerving sexual encounters, these are rich and rangy poems of a defiantly unusual character that linger in the mind as much for their controlled dissonances as their uncompromising subject matter.
At the heart of the collection are a suite of tightly focused, often impressionistic character studies ranging from cannibals to schoolgirls, but Irving also finds space in the shadows for desperate love songs to pilots and robots, satiric odes to tyrants and deft engagements with popular and literary culture. Whether turning the features of a pinball table into an emotional debris field or recounting unnerving sexual encounters, these are rich and rangy poems of a defiantly unusual character that linger in the mind as much for their controlled dissonances as their uncompromising subject matter.
Reviews / Votes
She can strip sexual longing down to its exposed nerves. -- D.A. Prince * Sphinx * These poems look you in the eye and won't look away before you do. -- Chris Emslie * Sabotage * She takes a surreal situation and uses it as a vehicle for exploring the embarrassment of adolescence and difference. * Hypocrite Lecteur * Never Never Never Come Back is an entirely idiosyncratic first collection, marrying portraits of gawky, unruly outcasts with forms that are both wonky and beautifully controlled. My only gripe is that I could easily have read through a further ten or twenty poems, and didn't want things to end so soon. I'm already itching to read it through again. -- Matthew HaighMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Illustrations
Not illustrated
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 6 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-78463-156-7 (9781784631567)
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
Person
Kirsten Irving was born in Lincolnshire and lives and works in London. Her debut pamphlet, What To Do, was published by Happenstance, and her first collection, Never Never Never Come Back, was published by Salt. In 2017, she published an online serial, Love Carcass, detailing an erotic affair with a beast. She won the 2011 and 2017 Live Canon International Poetry Prizes, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and commended for the Forward Prize. Her poetry has been widely anthologised, translated into Russian and Spanish, and thrown out of a helicopter. www.kirstenirving.com @KoftheTriffids
Content
I. Space Cadets
The World's Greatest Writer
Yosemite Sam
Hotel Midgard
The computer expert's penis
Karaoke Man
Pastoral
The Life Scientist
To a Thin Man
Roy
On the way home from killing your rival,
II. The Lost Girls
Recipe for a Saint
"Build Henry"
Nancy Archer steps out
Ants
Why my winter coat was given to Peter the Boots
Out There
Poem (Laura Palmer has been found)
Schoolgirl shootout
III. Deserters
Sebastian is
Pulsatilla
Meanwhile, down in the town, the good people drink on
To a Crashed Pilot
Three Betrayed Lieutenants
JoJen's, eight, and bring some wine
IV. Debris
On dressing up as Dracula to come out to your parents
Pinball Dreams
Splitting the Ego with Mary
The Sad Girl Waiting at the Mouth of the Pit
Straight to you
Supper
The Girl Who Rides Robots
Fishing
Yokohama Shopping
Notes
The World's Greatest Writer
Yosemite Sam
Hotel Midgard
The computer expert's penis
Karaoke Man
Pastoral
The Life Scientist
To a Thin Man
Roy
On the way home from killing your rival,
II. The Lost Girls
Recipe for a Saint
"Build Henry"
Nancy Archer steps out
Ants
Why my winter coat was given to Peter the Boots
Out There
Poem (Laura Palmer has been found)
Schoolgirl shootout
III. Deserters
Sebastian is
Pulsatilla
Meanwhile, down in the town, the good people drink on
To a Crashed Pilot
Three Betrayed Lieutenants
JoJen's, eight, and bring some wine
IV. Debris
On dressing up as Dracula to come out to your parents
Pinball Dreams
Splitting the Ego with Mary
The Sad Girl Waiting at the Mouth of the Pit
Straight to you
Supper
The Girl Who Rides Robots
Fishing
Yokohama Shopping
Notes