Description
Book SynopsisJenna Clake’s Museum of Ice Cream is part simulation, part internal monologue, part attempt to reach out. An uncanny examination of objects, scenes, and flavours, these poems explore how food can connect and divide, can feel isolating and terrifying: public and private jars of peanut butter, a tray of lemons, unfurling chocolate bar wrappers. In turning to television, childhood films, and social media accounts, her collection investigates how to reveal and conceal, what it means to have a secret, to be intimate, to navigate something that should be natural, but feels sickly, sour, and wrong. Museum of Ice Cream is Jenna Clake’s second collection, following her debut Fortune Cookie (2017), winner of an Eric Gregory Award and the Melita Hume Poetry Prize, which was also shortlisted for a Somerset Maugham Award.
Trade ReviewThe trajectory between Clake’s debut collection and Museum of Ice Cream is logical but still beautifully unexpected: the linguistic precision and surreal swerves are stronger than ever, but something deepens and resonates as the voice transitions from instructive, to consoling, to lost, often within the same stanza. These are poems of such sadness and grace; fear transfigured by a powerful imagination into endlessly explorable terrains. Not so much to guide as to reach out to you in your own maze of confusion, wonder and dread; which is all I ever really ask of poetry. -- Luke Kennard
Table of Contents11 Cloud Appreciation Society 12 I would die for you in the best way possible 13 Wooden doll, total being 14 Immersive experience of all the things I want for myself (that are bad for me) 16 Vixen 17 How much longer until I get this out? 18 I wanted Agent Cooper to save my life 20 Sponge cake, pound cake, gateau 21 there is no marine snow here, my friend 22 Self-portrait as the opening of a window on a hot morning 23 Organisational Skills for the Hungry 26 Milk, Strawberry, Sugar 27 The omission is meaningless 28 M’s letters to tumblr 32 Like other women 33 I hid fish in my pockets and forgot about it for days 34 Siesta for Olivia 36 All our problems began with a woman eating 37 On feeling my eggshell heart break 38 Jen’s Sweet Shop 40 i am driving for hours tonight; i didn’t bring snacks 41 I could cry, yes, I could 42 It’s no longer about us, it’s got to be about me 44 Elegy for Balto from the Bottom of a Frozen Lake 46 Quayside of Dogs 47 Self-portrait as a pink dressing room 49 Bread, orange, aura 50 Oyster Delight 52 if you’re near the park, come find me, i’m having a picnic 53 Still life of newspapers folded on a bistro set 54 Sunday roast on a dark wood table 56 I try to make sense of things by standing very close to windows 58 Tell me if you prefer your carrots as sticks or coins and I’ll always remember 59 Garments I have dreamed of but will
