I’ll Dress One Night As You

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	Chrissie Gittins I’ll Dress One Night As You
	Search for a word or phrase in this book … Biographical note: Chrissie Gittins’s poems have won prizes, been anthologized, broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and animated for Cbeebies television. Both her children’s poetry collections were shortlisted for the CLPE Poetry Award and I Don’t Want an Avocado for an Uncle (Rabbit Hole, 2006) was a Poetry Book Society Choice for the Children’s Poetry Bookshelf. Her first adult poetry collection is Armature (Arc, 2003). She writes plays for BBC Radio 4 and her first short story collection is Family Connections (Salt, 2007). BIC Basic EAN13: 9781844715169 ISBN: 9781844715169 Author: Chrissie Gittins Title: I’ll Dress One Night As You Series: Salt Modern Poets Product class: BC Language: eng Audience: General/trade BIC subject category: CTCH1 Publisher: Salt Publishing Pub date: 15-Apr-09 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		See larger image PAPERBACK / SOFTBACK 20% off at the UK Bookstore! ~~£8.99~~ £7.19		Short description/annotation: What undercuts these evocations of vivid living is the certain knowledge of death. These poems try to replace what is lost, or about to be lost, with the laying down of memory etched with the imagination. At once unflinching, sensual, delicate and elegiac, these poems inhabit the fluid spaces left between the present and the past. Main description: In Chrissie Gittins’ second collection she dresses in the guise of the grandson of Hitler’s bodyguard, Samuel Pepys’s mistress, the lover of Shakespeare’s youngest brother, and the cook at a lavish dinner held in the belly of a model dinosaur. What undercuts these evocations of vivid living is the certain knowledge of death. How does Alcyone survive without her beloved husband? How does Triptolemus feel on his deathbed knowing that eternal life was once within his reach? These poems try to replace what is lost, or about to be lost, with the laying down of memory etched by the imagination. The book includes three sequences. The title sequence is a tender lament for her mother. The second, called ‘Cloth’, tells of Mary Hindle – a woman made a savage example after the machine breakers riots in East Lancashire. The third, ‘Herbal Source’, welds stories to the anonymous words listed on a pavement sign outside a Chinese herbalist. At once unflinching, sensual, delicate and elegiac, these poems inhabit the fluid spaces left between the present and the past. What undercuts these evocations of vivid living is the certain knowledge of death. These poems try to replace what is lost, or about to be lost, with the laying down of memory etched with the imagination. At once unflinching, sensual, delicate and elegiac, these poems inhabit the fluid spaces left between the present and the past. Table of contents: I’ll Dress One Night As You Leaving Brancaster Staithe Mothering Sunday Every Night I Stayed Out of Place Retrieving the Capodimonte Jar Helen’s Daughter Say Something To Me Of Life The Man Who Carries A Picture Of Hitler She Gave Me Her Childhood Books Transmission The Grandmother I Never Knew Chorister, St Saviour’s Church, Southwark, 1607 Self-Portrait, Filippino Lippi, c. 1485 Landscape and Portrait The Carpet Fitter’s Wife Mr Pepys’s Inclination Around Thaxted Alcyone A Memory of Snow ‘The Whole of the Rain in Every Month’ Figure Climbing to the Kirkaig Falls The Second Drive to Dundonnell River Torridge Cloth Helmshore, 1826 Lancaster Castle Sleeping Room She-lag number 32 Letter to my husband, 12 November 1827, Sydney Parramatta River, August Queen of the Night Death Triptolemus NYNY Dinner in the Iguanodon Mould Lifeline Breakdown The Poets’ Strike Stitched People I Slipped from the Womb Fully Clothed Herbal Source Weight Loss Hay Fever Hair Loss Anxiety Stress Menopause Sex Drive Problem Infertility Optometrist The Registrar Rock Late September Pyjama Walk Crab Apples Pinnacles Colchicums Antica Locanda Montin Notes View excerpt as PDF: Click here to view a sample ( KB) Excerpt from book: Mr Pepys’s Inclination If ever there was a euphemism, I was it. He spotted me at St Olave’s, mouthing hymns to the booming organ. Come back for wine and cake, he says, his wife not cold, the sculptor still chiseling her conversational mouth. Seething Lane was steeped in learning. He tried with me, took me to see stocking weaving, the gilding of letters used for print. But he soon slid back to his friends. I didn’t mind not being married?— I had my maid, my bank account. I liked to go about with him, my hand resting on his dripping sleeve. Who cares what powdered heads might think? That Michaelmas those three armed men held up our coach was warm beyond belief. They poked the barrel at our driver’s heart. My moneybag pressed against my thigh, I held my solid breath. Sam gave up his silver rule, his gold pencil, his magnifying glass. I sat tight, willing my face to turn zinc white. I didn’t breathe a sigh till we got home. Now I wear my diamond mourning ring, I have two full presses of my own, I keep his portrait on my wall, beside the one of me, called Mrs Pepys. That’s me, in name, and history. Previous review quote: Gittins’s deadpan tone and skewed perspective mark her out as a true original … Gittins characterizes her speakers through disjunctive, seemingly random pronouncements that manage to betray their vulnerability, longing and frustration – she has a genuine gift’ Jane Yeh Poetry Review Previous review quote: Chrissie Gittins’s poems are elegant, sensual and deep. They are a joy to read first time round – and to revisit. Kate Kellawa Previous review quote: An artistic sensibility alert to the contradictions and possibilities of experience … the poetry of collisions, of the meeting of madness and sanity, of different experiences of an identical moment, of what is exact and what is elusive … these poems are moving; they achieve a degree of pathos that gives them authority. Rosie Bailey Envoi Previous review quote: She writes extremely well from the perspective of a child, and excels at the psychologically revealing. Judy Kendall P.N. Review Previous review quote: Her poems are well-sculpted, fine-boned, painterly and precise. Reflective as well as outward-looking, she writes vividly about the everyday as well as less familiar lives and places. Lively, accessible and gently surprising, hers is a voice refusing to be pinned down. Moniza Alvi Previous review quote: I love the way (the poems) build on observations; piling them up until, without hardly knowing it, there’s a revelation that really lifts the top of your head off. Vicki Feaver Previous review quote: An ear for what life sounds like, and … there’s so much feeling in the poems. But it’s never got that heavy, spongy quality that emotion can have if it’s not handled right. It’s precise. Helen Dunmore Previous review quote: She writes with tenderness and care, an ear for speech and a strong sense of empathy … the poems are full of images, colour and vitality. Her strength throughout the book is that at the heart of each poem is a person, a relationship, some insight into the human condition. Sally Baker The North Previous review quote: The description of place, particularly landscapes, is vivid and sensual, while the warmth of some of the imagery in some poems is punctuated by sudden and surprising violence or explicitly sexual imagery in others. Frank Startup The School Librarian Previous review quote: There is a northerness to the poems, they are honest, unpretentious, no garnish … they are exact, precise, they don’t pussyfoot around or beat around the bush. It’s her unflinching and unapologetic tackling of emotional concerns that, in my book, makes Armature a success. Peter Knaggs The Slab

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