Description
Book SynopsisHow might poetry help us articulate the body in illness, in work, and in love? Tiffany Atkinson’s fourth collection includes the prize-winning sequence ‘Dolorimeter’, which takes fragments of speech and found text from a hospital residency to pay homage to the inventiveness and humour of patients and staff in a series of meditations on the notion that pain resists language. Away from the wards, other poems consider the strangeness of the workplace and the embarrassing incursions of desire into everyday life, celebrating the ability of poetic language to lay awkwardness and uncertainty alongside unexpected openings and glimpses of revelation. A lumen is a unit of light, but also a channel or an opening inside the body; perhaps, in this collection, it may also serve as a metaphor for the work of the poem itself. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Trade ReviewA fresh, moving and brilliantly inventive book... some of the most striking, and touching, moments in the book come from its dry sense of humour... Atkinson sees the absurdity in everyday scenarios, but also their poetic potential. -- Sarah Howe * Poetry Wales, on So Many Moving Parts *
The unexpected imagery always packs a punch... Visceral, and at times unsettling, this darkly iridescent verse is hardly comfort poetry – but that's the point. -- Juanita Coulson * The Lady, on So Many Moving Parts *
This is poetry of acute aliveness... These new poems have the dynamic quality of robust, heightened speech... With these revelatory, refreshing poems, Atkinson conveys a many-faceted self, and frees up possibilities for the voice in poetry. -- Deryn Rees-Jones & Moniza Alvi * Poetry Book Society Bulletin, on So Many Moving Parts *
Table of ContentsI Dolorimeter: 19 readings 11 /ˌdɒləˈrɪmɪtə/ 12 Table 8.1: What makes patients anxious about gastroscopy 14 Heroin works 15 Found poem I 17 Accident & Emergency 19 Song of a pain 20 McGill Pain Questionnaire (annotated) please tick 21 Mr Broad’s morphine 23 Neuropathy 25 SOCRATES 27 Found poem II 28 A Biblical pain & an aside on bedside manner 30 Pranidhana 31 A line from the doctor (annotated) 32 Clean windows 34 A bad cold 35 Signs of the body: longitudinal sample at tea break 36 Last 38 The smokers outside Bronglais hospital II 41 You can’t go there 50 The heart it’s true looks jaunty 51 Walking with Virginia 52 In this class 53 Mantras 54 The department of small arts 55 Consent 56 Dear Sam 57 It is a very gracious hotel 58 Workshop 59 Panels 60 There is no sexual relation 61 Hymn 62 Dog speaks 63 Categories of experience c. 2016 64 The poem Kolkata 65 Wire-seller, Lal-Bazar 66 Kalighat 67 Yoga 68 Parable 69 Postscript 70 21 points for a feminist essay on film 72 Burgeon 73 Neighbour 74 Experiment 76 Eggshell 79 Notes
