Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the James Berry Poetry Prize. Marjorie Lotfi’s award-winning debut collection is a book of two halves, each a meditation on the idea of home, both the places we start and end up in our lives. Spanning a childhood in Iran dislocated by revolution, through years as a young woman in America, to her current home in Scotland, these poems ask what it means to come from somewhere else, what we carry with us when we leave, and how we land in a new place and finally come to rest. Poetry Book Society Special Commendation.
Trade ReviewThe Wrong Person to Ask by Marjorie Lotfi is a wondrous treasure – elegant poems of great tenderness and detail, vivid in heart and imagery, mesmerising in power. Whole worlds and people shimmer alive through scenes and stories of exile, departure, arrival, but most importantly, clear witness and remembrance. A deeply honouring book fully built of love.
-- Naomi Shihab Nye
In this unforgettable and assured debut collection, Lotfi explores issues of belonging and identity – firstly the lost world of an Iranian childhood through the eyes of a young refugee and ultimately the found worlds of America and Scotland. She brilliantly illustrates the little tragedies of global politics by focussing on the luminous, ordinary rituals of daily life. These are poems built both to haunt and reaffirm us; poems of the living, breathing world and our overarching right to find a home in it.
-- John Glenday
Table of ContentsI 13 Refuge 14 On seeing Iran in the news, I want to say 15 The Wrong Person to Ask 16 Two Grandmothers 17 Maman Bozorg 18 The gun in its holster 19 Riding the Line 20 The Game 21 Crossing the street for mother’s cigarettes 22 Shut Out the Noise 23 Packing for America 24 Hope 25 To the Airport 26 Origin 27 The Last Thing 28 Alarm I 29 Alarm II 30 I Picture of Girl and Small Boy (Burij, Gaza, 2014) 31 II Picture of Boy, Looking Away (Gaza, 2015) 32 Gabriella’s Dream 33 What You See in the Dark 34 Wishbone 35 Correction 36 Destruction of the Forty Martyrs Cathedral, Aleppo, Syria 37 Granddaughter, I entered your mother’s house 38 Checkpoint, Matveyev Kurgan 39 Khanoom 40 The End of the Road 40 i [There’s a moment every morning] 41 ii [Each breath in this place] 42 iii [Every blade against the cutting-board] 43 iv [She takes her boys back every summer] 44 v [Even in this lack of light, she sees] 45 vi [The boys carry her good looks] 46 vii [In her eightieth year, she sees her sisters] II 49 Sea Gooseberry (Pleurobrachia) 50 Sunday on the Luing Sound 51 Number 9 Cullipool 52 Sunflower 53 Star of the Sea 54 Williamina Fleming 55 What Work Is 56 Omega Centauri 57 Drift 58 Say It’s Nothing, Say It’s Rust 59 Horizon 60 Out to Sea 61 When They Ask 62 The Trunk 63 After the Match 64 The first thing he doesn’t forget 65 The Unfinished House 66 Storm Light 67 The Last Keeper 68 Citizen 69 Moving 70 And this is how it begins 71 O Love! 72 Edward Thomas on His Last Night with Helen 73 Keep 74 The Hebridean Crab Apple 76 Acknowledgements
