Poetry Read #2/23

Rachel Long: My Darling From the Lions

Long is a new poet to me, and this is her first collection – shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection. There’s some sex / relationship stuff, some religion, family, adolescence, race and there’s hair… and in Communion there is hair as religion.

There is a good deal of humour, not brash laugh out loud stuff, or “look at me aren’t I clever” stuff, but understated humour, slipped in almost deadpan. When her mum, doing her hair, tells the teenage girl she will be as beautiful as Winnie Mandela, the girl thinks, “I don’t know who this is, / but it doesn’t sound like someone Ben Clark will fancy.” (Jail Letter)

I feel middle-class when I’m in love. / I think it’s all the poached eggs on bird-seed bread. (Portent)

The repetition of the 5 line poems called “Open“, in the first section – of three – are all similar, but just different enough to make the point…

Writing as the voice of Barbie the narrator for two poems about the battles between Barbie’s Ken, and the doll who would be her new man, Steve…is a funny, precise punch of poetry.

Some poems tell stories – Helena, a drug-horror-date rape; Red Hoover, about a couple of hilariously failed dates with “the ridiculously good-looking Nigerian“; Mum’s Snake, on how you can’t let anyone touch your hair or they might curse you, in her mum’s case, with migraines.

When the mum of my then-best friend said / her daughter wasn’t allowed to play with me / because I was another N-word – meaning / Mum went round in her dressing gown to slap her silly / with her tongue, the returned to scatter the kitchen / and shred Dad’s Guardian for not sticking up for us … (Apples)

As is clear there are some substantial subjects covered head on, some alluded to, but Long’s use of words always feels deft, light-touched and precise, without being pedantic. A collection I can see myself re-reading … even if I don’t understand the title.