A Map Towards Fluency
Published on 27. June 2019
112 pages
978-1-78410-841-0 (ISBN)
Description
Shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize 2021
A Map Towards Fluency, Lisa Kelly's first collection, considers words, the power they impart, the power their absence withholds. Forgetting, mis-hearing, mis-remembering all challenge the imagination to find ways round and ways through. 'The idea of fluency interests me - and whether we can ever claim fluency in any language.' Her mother speaking Danish - which she cannot herself understand - is familiar and yet alienating: how Danish can she herself be when she cannot hear her mother's tongue with understanding? Her own attempts with British Sign Language are another challenge, a form of translation of sense in the absence of sound. 'I have to work hard to listen and this requires me to place you to my right side, to watch your lips, to watch your hands, to watch your gestures. How can form not matter?' The poems touch on these themes in various ways, not least in what they do with form.
A Map Towards Fluency, Lisa Kelly's first collection, considers words, the power they impart, the power their absence withholds. Forgetting, mis-hearing, mis-remembering all challenge the imagination to find ways round and ways through. 'The idea of fluency interests me - and whether we can ever claim fluency in any language.' Her mother speaking Danish - which she cannot herself understand - is familiar and yet alienating: how Danish can she herself be when she cannot hear her mother's tongue with understanding? Her own attempts with British Sign Language are another challenge, a form of translation of sense in the absence of sound. 'I have to work hard to listen and this requires me to place you to my right side, to watch your lips, to watch your hands, to watch your gestures. How can form not matter?' The poems touch on these themes in various ways, not least in what they do with form.
Reviews / Votes
'Lisa Kelly's poems are every bit attentive as they are inventive. Whether on hearing and deafness, or amongst oysters and aphids, she writes with an instinctive and joyful aplomb, which is unafraid of stretching the possibilities of language itself.'Jane Commane 'Lisa Kelly searchingly translates for us the intimate connections between language and the body, between symbol and experience.'
Jane Draycott 'informed and thematically complex... [Lisa Kelly] loves every aspect of writing poetry: the language which forms it, the literature which precedes it, the art which inspires it, and the lives which make it personal and accessible.'
Emma Desphande, The London Magazine 'For me, a great many debut collections tend to have a lot of filler in them, but not so with Kelly. The core strength of the work is impressively maintained from beginning to end. There are more ideas per page here than most collections of poetry could only dream of and it will be an absolute travesty if A Map Towards Fluency doesn't win a major prize in the coming year.'
Richard Skinner, Write Out Loud 'A Map Towards Fluency is an experimentation of the written language and a must-read for anyone interested in the amalgamation of the audible and the visual. it shows an impressive imagination and originality.'
Maria Sjsstrand, DURA Dundee
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Carcanet Press Ltd
File size
0,59 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-78410-841-0 (9781784108410)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Lisa Kelly has single-sided deafness. She is also half Danish. Her debut, A Map Towards Fluency (Carcanet 2019), was shortlisted for for the Michael Murphy Memorial Poetry Prize 2021. She is co-Chair of Magma Poetry and a regular host of poetry evenings at the Torriano Meeting House, London. She has been studying British Sign Language (BSL) for several years and has a Signature Level 6 qualification in BSL. Her poems have been selected for anthologies, including Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches Press) and the Forward Book of Poetry. In 2021, she co-edited What Meets the Eye, an anthology of poetry and short fiction by UK Deaf, deaf and Hard of Hearing writers for Arachne Press. She teaches poetry and performance, and is a freelance technology journalist. To escape noise, she walks and looks out for, among other things, fungi.
Author photo by Lottie McCrindell.
Author photo by Lottie McCrindell.
