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Biographical note: Geraldine Monk was born in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1952. Since first being published in the 1970s she has written six major collections of poetry and numerous chapbooks. Her writing has appeared extensively in the both the UK and the USA. As an extension to her activities in poetry she collaborates with many musicians including Martin Archer, Charlie Collins and Julie Tippetts. A collection of essays on her poetry, The Salt Companion to Geraldine Monk, edited by Scott Thurston, was brought out in 2007 by Salt Publishing.
BIC Basic
EAN13: 9781844717323
ISBN: 9781844717323
Author: Geraldine Monk
Title: Ghost & Other Sonnets
Series: Salt Modern Poets
Product class: BC
Language: eng
Audience: General/trade
BIC subject category: CTCH1
Publisher: Salt Publishing
Pub date: 05-Jun-09
Extent: 80pp
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight: 120 gms
Supplier: Gardners Books
Supplier: Ingram Book Group
Supplier: Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability: NP
Price: GBP 8.99
Price: USD 14.95
Rights: World
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Short
description/annotation: Ghost & Other Sonnets will disturb and delight. Working within the conventional form of the sonnet this sequence is on the surface one of Monk’s most accessible works but the simplicity is deceptive. Each poem shifts and veers into unexpected complexity. Words shimmy down the page to their unpredictable conclusion leaving the reader delighted, disconcerted and baffled. Monk brings together disparate strands of uncertainty in a fragile world and she does it with her usual tenderness, ferocity and humour.
Main description: Ghost & Other Sonnets will disturb and delight. Divided into three sections the sequence begins with the Ghost Sonnets. Using traditional ghost narratives Monk condenses them into the tightly controlled sonnet form and twists them into something totally new. Aficionados of ghost stories will revel in this reinvention of a popular genre. In the second section, & Sonnets there is a drastic mood change as personal experience and harrowing news items root the poems into the mundane world of everyday existence. Some of these poems delves into the dark reality of ‘unnatural’ happenings: the tragedies of the Beslan massacre or the Chinese cockle pickers whilst others rescue the banal and sweep it off into the realms of the fantastical. The final section, Other Sonnets inhabits the cusp between Ghost and &. Here chance and inexplicable coincidence meet in the ghostly multiplications of language.
Working within the conventional form of the sonnet this sequence is on the surface one of Monk’s most accessible works but the simplicity is deceptive as each poem shifts and veers into unexpected complexity. Words shimmy down the page to their unpredictable conclusion leaving the reader delighted, disconcerted and baffled. Monk brings together disparate strands of uncertainty in a fragile world and she does it with her usual tenderness, ferocity and humour.
Table of contents:
Contents
Ghost
1 ‘It started with a tryst and twist of …’
2 ‘Light a nightlight flimsy …’
3 ‘Agitation shocked the public library …’
4 ‘Swallow-tail moth artificially lit …’
5 ‘Desperation clung to petulant …’
6 ‘Sided by accident she wandered in a …’
7 ‘Chronic webbings. Intrigue. …’
8 ‘The disembodied head looked …’
9 ‘Then another door shut in …’
10 ‘An unearthly grown so sickly he …’
11 ‘Newly installed double …’
12 ‘The trans-Pennine late night train …’
13 ‘An angularity of hate stoked the room …’
14 ‘Was it moving? In a heart …’
15 ‘Spell binder driven wet. Two …’
16 ‘Exaggeration of bird song impaled …’
17 ‘A cumulonimbus of cupped hands …’
18 ‘Bypassing that room no one dared …’
19 ‘Sciatica nerves slews posture …’
20 ‘Ghost of her ghosts …’
&
21 ‘In fear we lay longitudinal. …’
22 ‘The heart-shaped lavender was …’
23 ‘Parting such sweet succulent flesh …’
24 ‘She strained her eyes through muslin …’
25 ‘A rare whiff. Aromas were way loud …’
26 ‘Big-time snow deafened. Bedrooms …’
27 ‘Wasted suburban garden …’
28 ‘It recurs: the …’
29 ‘A second glance and then another …’
30 ‘When the fog partially cleared …’
31 ‘Not waking and finding herself …’
32 ‘Onto my frozen fingers came …’
33 ‘Driven to the edge by wind chimes …’
34 ‘So remote it was beyond …’
35 ‘Army of shadows infiltrates …’
36 ‘No cigarettes in the ashtray. Between a …’
37 ‘Topping the head …’
38 ‘Shocking pink lips kissed sepia …’
39 ‘What makes you look in at the …’
40 ‘In her heart of hearts larks and …’
Other
41 ‘Cornering on a black fen. From kerb to …’
42 ‘Something wicked this way …’
43 ‘Prising eyes against the future …’
44 ‘After three days with …’
45 ‘Batten down the letter box. …’
46 ‘She slid one out. Delicately …’
47 ‘A distraught toe …’
48 ‘At the bottom of the bowl it nudged his …’
49 ‘What malice-driven hand …’
50 ‘Opening the envelope he found another …’
51 ‘When a storm sweeps up from …’
52 ‘For some reason it was in a …’
53 ‘Reconfiguring spaghetti …’
54 ‘Have I written this before? This …’
55 ‘Whatever it was it came to pass the …’
56 ‘Time out of mind the beasts of the pillows …’
57 ‘Stumpy staring in …’
58 ‘Water from the tap wasn’t water …’
59 ‘Hefted sheep leap a burning moat. Mint …’
60 ‘Thus spake someone from the water …’
61 ‘Others floundered. Crashed awkward …’
62 ‘Swan song. Anticipation blitzed in a …’ View excerpt as PDF:  Click here to view a sample (64 KB)
Excerpt from book:
10
An unearthly grown so sickly he
Died girlish young: translucence fixed in
Marble. In effigy without relief
Upon his death bed bound in medieval
Fug. Chapel-rot. The Ship of Fools sails
Upon the walls through none the wiser
Centuries receding. Spellbound with
Voyage she placed her palms upon his arms
Steadying her vertigo. Neck crane. Surge of
Flux. A tightening grasp of marble
Hand so slight the delicate light passed
Through its captive static: clasping hers in horror.
Sweetheart stoned in death. Please release her.
Let her go. Your tiny hand is frozen.
Previous review quote: For Monk, even the simplest & most familiar word comes across as opaque, its physicality & material otherness absolutely present. Ron Silliman Previous review quote: Geraldine Monk’s poetry activates words, makes them events rather than hollow vessels for received understanding. They play, clash, spark and rub up against one another in unpredictable ways with unforeseen consequences. Julian Cowley
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