Julia Bird

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Biographical note:  Julia Bird grew up in Gloucestershire and now lives in London. She works for the Poetry School and as a freelance live literature producer.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844714230
ISBN:  9781844714230
Author:  Julia Bird
Title:  Hannah and the Monk
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Oct-08
Extent:  64pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  10 mm
Weight:  96 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  Reading Julia Bird's debut collection is like sorting out the contents of an up-ended jewellery box. Crafted formal poems tangle with the rhinestone razzle of looser, noiiser lyrics.

What price consolation, the poems ask, where is the green heart of a city, when does love stop and the work start?

The answers come in all sizes and styles. Images from popular culture, urban myth, religion and history, music, film and TV glow with a steady emotional truth. From spivs to flying monks, chalk horses to London boozers, Bird's imagination takes a circuitous route at a determined clip.

Table of contents:
Article of Faith
Jim Fixed it For Me
Time, Ladies, Please
The World’s Population Visits the Isle of Wight
The Camera Never Lies
This Much is Almost Guaranteed
Short Film
Monoglutton
White Horse
As the Peacock
Covent Garden
Five Years Trying to Win the Flower Show Vegetable Animal Class
Paper Stars
Short Film II
Fire in a Crowded Theatre
Your Grandfather Would Have Wanted You to Have This
I Really Should Quit, But
Opinion
From Crammond Beach
Magnetic Translation?:?poetry one one sex
Short Film III
The Animals Went in Two by Two
Next Door Girl
Spiv
Clip
Hannah and the Monk
Radio at Night
Short Film IV
What I Would Like is a Birdcage
Dedication
Souchong Sevenling
Orange Pips
Magnetic Translation?:?come, games 1
Short Film V
we could nick a boat /and sneak off to this island
But They Wouldn’t Want Us to Go Hungry
Duet
Pure Maths
Breathing Pattern
Picture Book for Urban Babies

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Excerpt from book:  

Clip

Two kids are necking, Americanly,
in the front seat of a Cadillac …
or Buick … some long red soft-top classic.
The camera picks up on one ten-gallon bee
drumming its feet on the hot tin hood
then pulls out along the buffed upholstery
and hand-waxed body-work.

On the sound-track, a droning thunderhead
of scrubbing strings played bass and indistinct
is a murmur, a rumour of trouble

but back in the front seat,
he flexes, she rocks—and knocks her hip
on the button of the horn which stays on
and stays on. No matter how they giggle,
fumble under the dash, sort
and redress their rumpled state,
the horn keeps calling its one clear note—

a noise the by-now killer bees can't bear.
It angers and confuses them,
primes and blows them like a charge of shot
which zooms in on the road, the classic car,
the kids—and blacks out the windshield,
censors mirrors, blocks up the tail-pipe,
vents, their sounding mouths

till a swarm of stock footage,
cut and spliced with cheap FX,
stings and stings the kids to death.

Poor peach-fed kids, to be judged
and sent down by such a buzzing Moses.
If there is to be a sequel, lead the bees
to a local multiplex and lock the doors.
Screen them feature after feature—
nature films of orange groves and orchards
where smoke in the trees is just blossom
where work is the raising of pollen
and all these things are sealed in honey,
the one, the only law.

Unpublished endorsement :  These poems are remarkable for their charm, freshness and agility. The eye is keenly observant; the appetites strong; the tone confidential, elegiac and tender. From the poignant chronicle of Elmer and the Barmaid, through a witty take on a Shakespeare sonnet, the wistful bestiary of Five Years Trying to Win the Flower Show Vegetable Animal Class, to poems of camouflaged desire – ‘Hannah and the Monk’ is a first collection that bristles with lust for life. This bird in the hand is worth any number in the bush.

Annie Freud