Geraldine Monk

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Biographical note:  Geraldine Monk was born in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1952. Via a variety of routes and circumstances she came to Sheffield, South Yorkshire in 1984. She has lived there ever since.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781876857691
ISBN-10:  1876857692
ISBN-13:  9781876857691
Author:  Geraldine Monk
Title:  Selected Poems
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  15-Apr-03
Extent:  248pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  14 mm
Weight:  372 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 13.99
Price:  USD 20.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  A major selection from Monk’s work, including “Interregnum” in its entirety for the first time , here combined with new sequences not previously published. This is a substantial volume from a key British writer whose approachable experimental works are filled with wit, linguistic virtuosity and a sound grasp of the shifting realities of the worlds we live in.

Meet the author:

Podcasts

Play Long Wake (888 KB)


Play La Quinta del Sordo (1.1 MB)


Play Banquet (696 KB)


Play Animal Crackers (516 KB)


Play Sky Scrapers (1.3 MB)


Play Latitudes (1.1 MB)


Play Interregnum (1.3 MB)


Play Prague Spring (1.6 MB)


Play The Transparent Ones (1.6 MB)

Table of contents:
Long Wake
Rotations
La Quinta del Sordo
Banquet
Angles Diversions Corners
Animal Crackers
Sky Scrapers
Herein Lie Tales of Two Inner Cities
Latitudes
Interregnum
Trilogy
Manufractured Moon
The Transparent Ones
Insubstantial Thoughts on the Transubstantiation of the Text.
Absent Friends

View excerpt as PDF:

Click here to view a sample (64 KB)

Excerpt from book:  

Cliff Hanger

In the midst
came the end
          Well there you go …
          dropped off your perch
          quiet as a mohair scarf …
          just like your best dream
          dreamt of …

Leaving me
          me–all a–drift
          all–in a day’s work
          with a mouth full
          of unsaids so I’ll
          have my sayso now

With glitches
& gremlins
          The computer scanner
          drew a blank
          so no o.k.
          you’ll not make it
          to my birthday
          though we both knew
          you wouldn’t go
          to the bitter ends of
          your ancestral dig
          into colourful
          meaning
          deeply
          shady crooks
          and songbirds
          hooking
          more than
          even we
          bargained
          for.

convergence
of spookilies
          My do at
          Eckington Hall
          fell through a stone
          ’s throw from
          Renishaw
          ’s dragon flies spell
          trancing aerial
          hieroglyphs
          in–non–rhyming
          couplets.

          Japanese
          fancy–fish tail
          us humans to the sharp
          corners of geometric
          ponds blowing
          kisses of life
          poised –

Scaling
the heights
          So here is the
          where the winter list
          and shiver of Christmas
          trees await their moment
          where your old
          man’s old man’s
          beard & fiddle
          scaled
          carousal singing
          stately gates
          rocking and
          shocking the
          maids and ever
          so young Lady
          Sitwell with
          child–wild
          Plantagenet
          poet.

Review quote:  I am continuously awed by Monk’s opening out of experiential spaces both in terms of drama and close feeling, the way she catches the small words we offer in the face of immensities.

David Annwn

Review quote:  … wild, erotic and deeply strange writing. A poetry that reveals the unspeakable weirdness of the everyday.

Sean Bonney

Review quote:  Geraldine Monk is both a comic and a ferocious writer … she writes with a sense of fury that is almost drowned out by laughter.

Tim Allen

Review quote:  Interregnum, [Monk’s] piece on the Pendle Witches, is a case in point, ranging over a variety of possible approaches to the construction of a poem – an undeniably fascinating work … it’s still good to see the work of one of our senior avant-gardistes being given serious attention like this.

Tony Frazer
Shearsman