Description
Book SynopsisReader's nomination for Guardian First Book Award 2013
Anchors, shipwrecks, whales and islands abound in this first collection by young Anglo-Breton poet Claire Trévien. Trévien's is a surreal vision, steeped in myth and music, in which everything is alive and – like the sea itself – constantly shifting form. Fishermen become owls; a woman turns into a snake, while another gives birth to a tree; a glow-worm might become a wasp or 'a toy on standby'.
Struck through with brilliant, sometimes sinister imagery reminiscent of Pan's Labyrinth or an Angela Carter novel, The Shipwrecked House is a lyrical and hallucinatory debut from a poet featured in Salt's Best British Poetry 2012.
Claire Trévien was born in Brittany. Her pamphlet Low-Tide Lottery was published by Salt in 2011. Her work also appears in the recent anthologies Best British Poetry 2012 (Salt, 2012) and Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam (Cinnamon, 2012). She is the editor of Sabotage Reviews and the co-organiser of Penning Perfumes, a creative collaboration between poets and perfumers, featured in the Guardian (June 2012) and the Financial Times (August 2012). She is currently in the fourth year of a PhD at Warwick University.
Trade ReviewThese are serious, visually stunning poems of nationality, history and memory, but they're personal and generous in their wit. Reading them is like spending an hour in the company of someone you secretly admire. - Luke Kennard
Table of ContentsOrigin Story The Shipwrecked House I Wreck Whales Entrepreneurs The Shipwrecked House II La Fregate Journeys of Evaporation Endnotes to a History of the Sea Poem in Which You Ask How You Can Tell Real Pearls from High Quality Fakes Communion Bread Cthulhu Mushroom Picking Falls Vagrant Fantasy Belleville Novella Telegrams Suzanne Valadon Seen by Toulouse-Lautrec Seen by Me Rotting Anchors Rusty Sea Glas Beg an Dorchenn The Cornish Owlman Fest Noz Melusine Metro Impression, Sunset Past Simple Introduction to My Love Sing Bird Ruff The Great Indoors Head Start I Heart You The Night We Saw a Glow-worm Death of the Author Cyrano de Bergerac Takes a Last Bow Saturday Night at La Mars Erect The Fates In the Garden of Death Good God that's a lot of shake Wipe the Blade Clean on the Grass
