Fiona Pitt-Kethley

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Biographical note:  Fiona Pitt-Kethley was born in 1954. She studied at the Chelsea School of Art where she obtained a BA hons. before going on to become a full-time writer. As a student she ushered at the Old Vic and National Theatre. While writing she sometimes worked as a film extra. She married the chess grandmaster and former Britrish chess champion, James Plaskett, in 1995. They have a son Alexander. In 2002 they moved to Spain. At first they lived in an ex-pat area until driven out by tyre-slashing English and Irish pensioners. They are now much happier living amongst the Spanish in Cartagena. Since moving to Spain Fiona acquired new hobbies. She practices Kyokushin karate and goes rock-hunting and hill-walking in the Sierra Minera, an area she is currently writing a book on. She also enjoys fishing for her dinner, listening to local Flamenco concerts and snorkels for several months of the year.

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844714537
ISBN:  9781844714537
Author:  Fiona Pitt-Kethley
Title:  Selected Poems
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Mar-08
Extent:  144pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  15.5 mm
Weight:  216 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  This superb selection of Fiona Pitt-Kethley’s much celebrated poetry portrays an unusual life but also celebrates the things that all women, and all human beings, have in common (mainly sex). Incidents from Pitt-Kethley’s own life are used as a microcosm to portray greater truths. Her frank and at times erotic work is shocking, flagrant and bitingly funny.

Table of contents:
Sky Ray Lolly
Baby Doll
Pigeons
Thoughts After a Burglary
The Fox
The Mask
The Ecumenical Movement
Bums
Evolution
Apples
Giant Hogweed
A Sunday Afternoon
Taking Off
Ghost Train
Red Fish
Swimming Baths
Charity
Tragedy
Dirty Old Men
‘The Hidden Persuaders’
Private Parts
Beards
The Face Below
A Piece of Jade
Cherry Trees
French Connection
La Vie Boheme
Cockroaches
Audiences
Night London
The Mirror Crack’d
Merging
Man, Woman and Superman
1984
Bond Girl
Old Extras
Lying
Girlie Mags
Sex Objects
Trying Too Hard
AIDS
How to Become a Handy Man
Laryngitis
Penis Envy
Memo from a Muse
Marital Advice
High noon in the Oral Office
Advice to Champagne Charlies
Country Walk
The Serpent’s Complaint
Goat Show
Guide Dog
The Fear of Splitting Up
Fortune
I Could Use a Butt of Canary
Bird Watching
Men
Married Men
Just Good Friends
Censorship
That Word
Mills and Boon
Death of a Princess
Song of the Nymphomaniac
The After Life
Crap Literature
Double Act
Carnal Conversation
Dildoes
The Book Trade
Ken Roberts
‘Expense of Spirit’
A Curious Hobby
The National Health
In Praise of Old Men
Ode to a Fart
Rewind
Iconoclasts
Water-birth
Placenta Alexander
Married Bliss
Dogs
Pussy Love
Bed Time
Morning After
Blow Jobs
No Smoking
My Prickly Friend
Intro Dive (Eilat, 1992)
Designer Sex
Orphic Mystery
Deus Ex Machina
Chess
Wolf-Man

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Excerpt from book:  

Sex Objects

I learned from a friend’s porno mag that men
can buy the better class of plastic doll,
(posh ones are hard and unyielding, not the
pneumatic sort that fly from windows when
they’re pricked), in slow instalments, torso first.

Well-qualified in wanking, Mark saves up
his pennies till they grow to pounds and then
invests in Ingrid, just the body, for
his carnal press-ups?—?a bit too flesh-pink
for human and she sports a ridgy seam
where back meets front. Mark humanises her?—
steals her a black lace bra that doesn’t fit,
(he’s not that used to seeing naked tits),
and puts a cover of a Cosmo girl
up on the pillow where his doll’s neck ends.

Six months on, tired of screwing her pink trunk,
he spends his pocket money on a head.
A bald one comes by post, mouth a red 0.
He buys his girl a man-made fibre wig,
and, graduating to fellation, talks
about her to his friends.

He gets the arms for Christmas and soon gives
his doll a voice, a steamy tape?; he’s good
at it by now, he thinks, and she should tell
him so. The tape’s a great success at first,
until he starts to get the timing wrong,
and Ingrid, moaning says ‘It’s wonderful’?—
after he’s gone.

Mark’s not a legs-man, so these limbs come last?—
a duty?—?something to hook round his back.
He’s shocked when they arrive?—?one black, one white.
The firm’s in liquidation and could just

supply him with the halves of two whole pairs.
(The black’s from ‘Sonia’, another doll.)

That limb cures his Pygmalionitis quite.
He starts to look for human girls to fuck,
but finds they usually need persuasion first,
their fannies aren’t so neatly set in front and,
unlike Ingrid, they can criticise.

Previous review quote:  The Christina Rossetti of blow-jobs and Brewer’s droop.

Boyd Tonkin
The Observer

Previous review quote:  She´s one of the best poets working today.

Molly Parkin

Previous review quote:  Her own salient characteristics are those that used to be called masculine – directness if speech, independence, courage both physical and social, sexual ruthlessness and well-muscled legs.

Lucy Hughes Hallet

Previous review quote:  She is a dedicated poet, getting better all the time.

A.N. Wilson

Previous review quote:  The only prizes she’d win are of the cattle-market variety.

Arts Council England Officer