Description
Book SynopsisBodies. Rhythms. Motion. Sounds. All Fours is a debut collection of poetry from Nia Davies, a book of rituals in language that stalk the space between what is uttered and what is meant. These poems are haunted by the strange traces of the longest words in the world and folk-mythic figures such as Sinbad, Eurydice, Mossy Coat, Pan and Baba Yaga. They pose riddles with multiple or mysterious answers. A swerving sweary jump into a terrain that is both comically musical and perplexedly political, All Fours speaks of the (mis)adventures of sex and human communication, a life full-to-bursting with burning questions. All fours was longlisted for the 2019 Michael Murphy Memorial Prize and shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award 2018 (Wales Book of the Year Awards).
Trade Review'Nia Davies's poems are sharply attentive to the realm of the 'inner ear', a meeting point of external and internal environments. The lines have their own intense music, but instead of approaching song's recognition and resolution they push towards the unfamiliar. Archaeologies and soundscapes are carefully excavated in language that sparks at every turn, while multiple directions open for the reader and 'choice is a parallelogram / best made on the slant".' -Zoe Skoulding; 'Nia Davies writes rich and adventurous poems. Her work feels borderless, influenced by experimental American and eastern European poetries. In the event that an "I" surfaces in her work, it is defiantly plastic and multivalent.' - Dai George
Table of ContentsYou will never guess my name 1. Mossy Coat 2. Pantheon 3. With Sinbad 4. 'I know descent lives in the word decent' 5. '& blow in the god's good wake to leave only pounded dust' 6. About me 7. First Riddle: Pussy Riddle Dialogue 8. Second Riddle: You will never guess my name 9. Third Riddle: No riddle Happy Birthday to me! 10. poem with sex in 11. psychoanalysis 12. in the year ninety 13. Hello Beautiful 14. Born in a moody basket 15. If you go west Listen 16. A word in your shell-like 17. Many Tremors 18. 'We make an insubstantial territory' 19. Of course he thinks part-mythic lemon yellow epithet 17. the mediums of viktor ullmann 18. Relations 19. Tiny nudist colony 20. 18 21. Dear Diary 22. Let's make an experience From Cekoslovakyalilastiramadiklarimizdanmisiniz or LONG WORDS 23. The hatch a bullet... 24. For your continued behaviour... 25. For those who were repeatedly 26. For those who have become like counterrevolutionaries 27. About to become the leader... 28. The most emotionally... 29. [two people]... 30. Most anticrystalising... 31. Are you one of those people... try, for a variety of reasons, a sledgehammer 32. It is not sufficient to be waiting like this 33. Things to try before you die 34. nature poem 35. the magical experience 36. I want to do everything
