Full Description
According to the seventeenth-century herbarium The Garden of Eden, a 'missel-child' is a mysterious being found beneath a mistletoe-covered tree - a changeling, perhaps, 'whereof many strange things are conceived'. Helen Tookey's first full collection of poems starts from the missel-child to explore archaeologies of identity, place and language. She is a formally inventive writer, using collage and syllabics, exploring elegy and myth. The poems in this book create a space in which language enables something to be said and also to be shown.
Contents
I
Then is it true At Burscough, Lancashire Prints Estuarine Shavuot Cockleshells Poem for Sabine Magnolia Among Alphabets Fox-Seers Autumn Child
II
Missel-Child Unadopted Funeral and Fox At the Castle Water, its Voicings Katherine In a Richer Mine Shilling Visit Cedar Among the Gods (Persephone)
III
Male Nude by R.B. Kitaj Mono Portrait of a Young Woman With Joe on Silver StreetDer Tod in Venedig The Hardened Criminals of Tomorrow When I was quite small I would sometimes dream Miss Yamada Has Gotten Married America A long war, and now the returning
IV
Fosse Way Hollow Meadows Persephone in Adiyaman Philadelphus Rheidol Valley Priest Heron In the dying days of the year we walked Secret Name Climbing the Hill at Sunset
Notes
