Are You Man Enough To Be Woman - Couverture souple

Dante, Lille

Couverture souple

ISBN 13 : 9798284392331

Editeur : Independently published, 2025

Synopsis

Prize Winner in the Sentinel Poetry Book Competition 2021:
"ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH TO BE WOMAN is an intriguing title matched by the quirkiness of this collection. Poems are vibrant, hard hitting and shocking in impact. Dystopian in theme and mood, they nevertheless leap off the page with their energy and originality.
The poem AFTER SHANE refers to words being ‘blood-drenched’ and that is the effect they have on me. I feel part of a scenario where a woman ‘imagines a gun so clearly/that her pointed fingers smoke/and drag her arm down with their weight.’
The reader of ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH TO BE WOMAN is no mere observer but is made to feel inside a world where ‘clothes hangers gleam like meat hooks’.
Love in its many guises is a constant theme in this collection but it is a ‘fever run cold’ (MARIA FROM KENSINGTON) and underscored by a ‘sense of disappointment’.
Sometimes it is seen as ‘a rescue dog that you expect/to crap where it crouches until you train/it otherwise and your home forever/stinks of piss and damp fur and you stumble/over half chewed bones.’ (… AIN’T THERE ONE DAMN SONG …?). Here is one representation of love but this is an author who can see many aspects of a situation and has the skill to convey them.
The poem G.L.O.R.I.A is striking for its tenderness and poignancy as it depicts a woman lover ‘dead before forty’ who ‘laughed/ when I wept and shed tears as last summer/was less than glorious/who said my name/and nothing more when I was still sitting/ in traffic half way to the hospital.’
The way the writer uses the art of juxtaposition in ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH TO BE WOMAN is brilliant. No other word will express the skill shown here. THE BLONDE AT THE BUS STOP is a perfect example. The blonde in question ‘smells of last night’s fag end kebab/and nail polish remover’. Nevertheless she has ‘Nordic ancestors who scanned the horizon/and saw the raw edge of the world.’ The final stanza combines the two worlds: ‘A Viking helmet rusts/in the drowned ruins of East Anglia/and it starts to rain as the 252 arrives.’
THE GRAIL IS BOTH A CAULDRON AND A SPEAR is another stunning poem. ‘Can’t beat/proper china for a decent brew’ says the mother as she makes the tea. ‘Don’t be daft, girl,’ she comments as her daughter refuses a Peek Freans biscuit, ‘You don’t eat enough to feed a sparrow.’ Clichés like this are interspersed with the inner thoughts of the narrator, the ‘Dream of strange paths/that trip my questing feet.’ The poem’s central symbolism is highlighted by this juxtaposition of voice and the reader is left with the paradox of biscuits and the body of Christ, of a cup of tea and a holy cup of blood.
ARE YOU MAN ENOUGH TO BE WOMAN is not a comfortable read. Far from it. Shockingly powerful, every word matters. It is outstanding and an original, vibrant, relevant book of its time."

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Independently published
• Date d'édition: 2025
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 13: 9798284392331
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 148
• Coordonnées du fabricant: Manufactured by Amazon on behalf of the author; https://www.amazon.fr/hz/contact-us; ; c/o Amazon Media EU S.à.r.l., 38 Avenue John F. Kennedy; Luxembourg; L-1855; Luxembourg