Description
How 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.
About the Author
Tiffany Atkinson was born in Berlin in 1972 to an army family, and lived in Wales after moving to Cardiff to take a PhD in Critical Theory. After teaching at Aberystwyth University for some years, she is now Professor in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She won the Cardiff Academi International Poetry Competition in 2001. Her first collection, Kink and Particle (Seren, 2006), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award. Catulla et al (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), her second collection, was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2012 and was a TLS Book of the Year. Her third collection, So Many Moving Parts (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and won the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2015. She is the editor of a theoretical textbook, The Body: A Reader (2003), and has strong research interests in the medical humanities, especially the history of anatomy and representations of the body. Her fourth collection, Lumen (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), includes a sequence exploring representations of pain, illness and recovery - work that won the 2014 Medicine Unboxed Prize - and is Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is currently working on a series of critical essays about 'the poetics of embarrassment'.
Reviews
A 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 *
Book Information
ISBN 9781780375304
Author Tiffany Atkinson
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 7mm
About the Author
Tiffany Atkinson was born in Berlin in 1972 to an army family, and lived in Wales after moving to Cardiff to take a PhD in Critical Theory. After teaching at Aberystwyth University for some years, she is now Professor in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She won the Cardiff Academi International Poetry Competition in 2001. Her first collection, Kink and Particle (Seren, 2006), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Jerwood Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers Award. Catulla et al (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), her second collection, was shortlisted for the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2012 and was a TLS Book of the Year. Her third collection, So Many Moving Parts (Bloodaxe Books, 2014), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and won the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) in 2015. She is the editor of a theoretical textbook, The Body: A Reader (2003), and has strong research interests in the medical humanities, especially the history of anatomy and representations of the body. Her fourth collection, Lumen (Bloodaxe Books, 2021), includes a sequence exploring representations of pain, illness and recovery - work that won the 2014 Medicine Unboxed Prize - and is Poetry Book Society Recommendation. She is currently working on a series of critical essays about 'the poetics of embarrassment'.
Reviews
A 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 *
Book Information
ISBN 9781780375304
Author Tiffany Atkinson
Format Paperback
Page Count 80
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Dimensions(mm) 234mm * 156mm * 7mm
