Valeria Melchioretto

Biographical note:  Valeria Melchioretto is Italian and was born in the German part of Switzerland. She moved to the UK in the early 90s and holds a degree in Modern Drama and an MA in Fine Art. Valeria has appeared in prestigious periodicals and has been widely anthologised. In 2005 she won the first New Writing Ventures. This is her debut collection which was sponsored by the Arts Council of England.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844713080
ISBN:  9781844713080
Author:  Valeria Melchioretto
Title:  The End of Limbo
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Oct-07
Extent:  80pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  5 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

Main description:  This book is a journey through heaven and hell and back, stopping at numerous stations on the way including iffy guest houses and ice palaces. The luggage might contain as little as the time of day or as much as a lover. Although the route occasionally leads through uncanny regions, where the familiar is suspect, it is also a journey which celebrates the possibility of change and sudden transformation. These poems not only capture different moments and moods but they are fusions of the personal, the archetypal and alternative realism, which aim to transport the reader through the vehicle of vivid images and rich metaphors. It is a journey striving to explore a truth easily missed in the clutter of the mundane, a journey of heart, spirit and mind which could leave memorable impressions. These poems are passionate investigations of the voyage through life.

Podcasts

Play The Normal Head (2.4 MB)


Play From the Intestines of a Mystical Dog (1.8 MB)


Play Meeting Mondrian by the Red Square (1.5 MB)

Table of contents:
The Suitcase
Cubism
Finding Myself in a Pair of Fisheyes
The Language of the North Wind
Naming Clouds
Walnut
The Unknown
Omission
The Tear Percolator
The Old Man and the Mountain
Happy Marriage
Ponte Della Sera
The Normal Head
Grandmother’s Cataracts
Podding Peas
Making my First Friend
Ritual
Concerto
From the Intestines of a Mystical Dog
The Mississippi Flows Through Our Living Room
House Without Roof
Dwelling in Amber
Rodinsky’s Room
Reason for Knocking on an Empty House
Short Let
Twin Room
Lazarus Proposes Marriage
The End of Limbo
Exclusive Persephone Interview
About No God in Particular
Sweet and Sour Songs
In the Devil’s Pockets
Peasant’s Heaven
The Garden of Earthly Delights
The Gospel
Venice is Burning
Map-makers
Papal Blessings
Cricket Sound
Tape Recording
Polar-Sphinx Moth
Spheres Unrequited
The Girl with the Shoe Fetish
Seven Sisters
White Noise
The Dowry
Wintering
Lapsang Souchong
The Silk Road
Wind Horse
The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon
A Hungry Animal
Subliminal
Absence of Absence
Meeting Mondrian by the Red Square
Full Void
The Virtue
Published

View excerpt as PDF:

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Excerpt from book:  

The Suitcase

My life has no kitchen or dining room.
It is a long hallway, walled by peripheral vision:
a living room spacious as a departure lounge.

Here waiting stretches time’s muscle
through the weight of shortcomings.
All I carry is a suitcase containing the time of day.

Its lining familiar as my skin, its handle worn,
slightly arched like a collarbone, a potential key
to sagas, the yarn of my emigrating ancestors.

The suitcase is rigid yet made of impressions.
In generations we will have wings, mutate like finches
with beaks like knifes and forks.

* * *

I admire the spiders, how homely they are,
never satisfied with a napkin-sized dwelling.
They aim for tablecloth-sized webs,

even though mostly it catches nothing but light,
pure as goodness in the killing of flies.
Only a spider’s loom can capture such lumen.

If I could embroider my life with this threat
I would make a needle from one of my unattached ribs
from the twelfth ribcage raw. The needle’s eye being vast

and infinitely dilating. I would tread light though it
as if through the lumen of my arteries,
as if through a gateway to new dimensions.

Unpublished endorsement :  Valeria Melchioretto is one of the most inventive new voices in poetry. The End of Limbo is packed with astounding images that are both extravagant and real – an utterly original debut.

Pascale Petit

Review quote:  All the writing has a compellingly quirky sensibility and intellectual intensity which appeals to both head and heart.

Eva Salzman

Review quote:  Linguistically ingenious and uneasily disturbing.

Elaine Feinstein
Poetry Review