Description
Book SynopsisMiriam Nash spent her early years on the Isle of Erraid, West Scotland, where Robert Louis Stevenson's family once worked as lighthouse engineers. Voices of the island echo through her first collection, All the Prayers in the House, which holds at its heart, the rupture and re-imagining of a family. Shifting and non-linear, the collection travels far from its coastal opening, moving south, crossing the Atlantic, visiting a women's prison and a 17th century ladies dictionary. Here are poems of ritual and transgression, safety and danger, tussles with the meaning of companionship and marriage. Bold, honest, imaginative and playful, they take the form of postcards, fragments, letters, underwater phonecalls and formal verse - many kinds of prayer, perhaps, for many kinds of storm. All the Prayers in the House won a Somerset Maugham Award 2018 and was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection 2018.
Trade Review'Miriam Nash's work is thematically satisfying, energetic and dynamic. These anarchic poems are the product of an original and febrile mind. A blast.' - Jackie Kay, Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2016; 'Miriam Nash's poems provide pleasure through the variety and veracity of their subject matter, her insight and freshness of approach, and the warmth she breathes into them. Through subtle shifts of key and perspective they remain touchingly accessible, whether recapturing girlhood fears and vulnerabilities or creating semi-dream worlds, as when corresponding with RLS. Equally at ease with a broken line and traditional ballad form, her often quirky ways of seeing are enhanced by the lightsomeness of a songstress.' - Stewart Conn, Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2016; 'An already mature voice exploring with great precision our painstaking routines.' - Daljit Nagra
Table of ContentsGuide 3 The Single Mother 4 IKEA Marriage 5 Prayer for my Father as a Child 6 The Black and Blue Boy 7 Road Move on the A38 8 Song of the Mainland 9 On my First Idea of Marriage 10 Shoplifte 11 To the Metro North Conductor 12 Nail Polish for Valhalla 13 The Wedding Vow 14 A Lightkeeper Must Be a Man of Parts 15 Letter to R. L. S. 16 The Walking Father Blues 17 Arsenal 18 Stepmother 19 At my Parents' Wedding 20 Photo of my Father, Erraid, c. 1984 21 The Mother Praises Head Lice 22 Vesper 23 It's Not Your Fault, They Said to the Girl 24 Of His Bones 25 Postcards for R. L. S. 26 The Mother's Silly Clock 27 A Plumper 28 The Arrangement 29 On my Ninth Idea of Marriage at the 2014 Scottish Referendum 30 Fair 31 Letter from R. L. S. 33 The Mother Tells her Daughter of a Storm...35 The Sink 36 The Story of the Bones 37 The Father's Caesarian 39 Michaelmas Beast 40 Last Fish 41 Good Friday 42 We Can Still Dance 43 Dad Calling on the Wooden Spoon Phone 44 Dear Mother Father God 45 Higher Maths 46 Love Song for my Parents, 20 Years Divorced 47 Song of my Harp 48 The Lights 49 Love Song for a Keeper 50 Notes 51
