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Rachel Long’s much-anticipated debut collection of poems, My Darling from the Lions, explores shame, love and healing through her intimate poetic voice.
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize / the Costa Poetry Award / the Forward Prize for Best First Collection / the Jhalak Prize
British poet Rachel Long’s poems are so razor-sharp and witty that they stand out from the first line. Long is also founder of the Octavia Collective for Womxn of Colour (a ‘community-minded’ collective where women of color can safely (learn to) write poetry, a response to the lack of inclusivity within literature and the academy).
She debuted two years ago with the impressive collection My darling from the lions. This collection was nominated for five different poetry awards and was named one of the 100 must-read books of 2021 by TIME.
There is a vibrancy to her narrative poems that is extraordinary to find in a text; with dizzying precision, Long describes humorous, sensual and surreal scenes.
Sometimes, as a reader, you recognize yourself in the candid, uncomfortable moments Long shares; sometimes, on the contrary, the scenes are alienating. However, Long has a talent for making that alienation come across naturally nonetheless.
The collection can be described as a coming-of-age story, in which the speaker survives a tumultuous childhood and adolescence only to find himself in the confusing maze called adulthood.
Rachel Long creates relatable, human work that is sure to leave an impression that is sure to leave an impression long after she has once again traded the Rotterdam stage of Poetry International for her native London.
Long reveals herself as a razor-sharp and original voice on the issues of sexual politics and cultural inheritance that polarize our current moment. But it’s her refreshing commitment to the power of the individual poem that will leave the reader turning each page in eager anticipation: here is an immediate, wide-awake poetry that entertains royally, without sacrificing a note of its urgency or remarkable skill.
OPEN
This morning she told me
I sleep with my mouth open
and my hands in my hair.
I say, What, Mum, like screaming?
She says, No, baby, like abandon.
Rachel Long is a poet and the founder of Octavia Poetry Collective for Women of Colour, which is housed at Southbank Centre in London. My Darling from the Lions, first published by Picador in 2020, is her debut collection. She was born in London, and resides there today.
My Darling from the Lions:
Poems
by Rachel Long (Author)
Publisher: Tin House Books
Publication date: September 21, 2021
Language: English
Print length: 88 pages
ISBN-10: 1951142713
ISBN-13: 978-1951142711
Paperback
$14.98
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Soldatenmädchen
Und wenn du Männer zwingen willst,
So mußt du rasch dich rüsten
Und, eh’ im West der Schnee noch schmilzt,
Marschier’n nach Frankreichs Küsten.
Und wenn du Mädchen zwingen willst,
So weck’ nur dein Gelüsten,
Und ruh’ heut’ nacht, daß du es stillst,
An meinen weißen Brüsten.
Und was der Leute Mund drob’ red’t,
Den Spott will ich ertragen;
Wenn dir der Feind nicht widersteht,
Wie sollt’s dein Lieb wohl wagen ?
Ein heißes Herz ist noch kein Fehl,
Ein’ tapfre Seel’ kein Schaden,
Und wenn sich fanden Herz und Seel’,
Wird uns der Himmel gnaden.
Denn so ist dein und mein Geschick:
Dir schuf der Schmied die Waffen;
Den ros’gen Mund, den dunklen Blick,
Die hat mir Gott geschaffen.
Der Schuster hat die Schuh’ gemacht,
Die deinen Weg betraten,
Vom Schneider hab’ ich meine Tracht,
Mein Kindlein vom Soldaten.
Gertrud Kolmar
(1894 – 1943)
Soldatenmädchen
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Der Brief
Ein Fetzen Weh, vom Wind daher gefegt,
Das war er nun.
Ich hab’ ihn still ins heil’ge Buch gelegt,
Zu ruhn – zu ruhn—–
Und die vergilbten Blätter schlössen ihn
So linde ein,
Wie Totenhülle, weißer denn Jasmin,
Der braune Schrein.
So fern der Unrast, die da draußen tost,
Hat er geruht.
Und war der Klage voll und gab mir Trost
Er war so gut—–
Gertrud Kolmar
(1894 – 1943)
Der Brief
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One woman, the performance of a lifetime. Or two.
An exhilarating, destabilizing Möbius strip of a novel that asks whether we ever really know the people we love.
Two people meet for lunch in a Manhattan restaurant.
She’s an accomplished actress in rehearsals for an upcoming premiere.
He’s attractive, troubling, young—young enough to be her son.
Who is he to her, and who is she to him?
In this compulsively readable, brilliantly constructed novel, two competing narratives unspool, rewriting our understanding of the roles we play every day – partner, parent, creator, muse – and the truths every performance masks, especially from those who think they know us most intimately.
Taut and hypnotic, Audition is Katie Kitamura at her virtuosic best.
Katie Kitamura is the author of four previous novels, most recently A Separation and Intimacies, which was longlisted for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award and was a finalist for a Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She is a recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature, a Lannan fellowship, and many other honors, and her work has been translated into twenty-one languages. She teaches in the creative writing program at New York University.
Audition: A Novel
by Katie Kitamura (Author)
Language: English
Paperback
April 8, 2025
Publisher: Riverhead Books
EAN: 9798217045839
21,95 euro
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The daring and deeply sexy poems in Lonely Women Make Good Lovers are bold with the embodied, earthy, and startlingly sensual.
These unforgettable love poems—queer, complicated, and almost always compromised—engage a poetics of humility, leaning into the painful tendernesses of unbridgeable distance. As Kuipers writes, love is a question “defined not by what we / cannot know of the world but what we cannot know of ourselves.” These poems write into that intricate webbing between us, holding space for an “I” that is permeable, that can be touched and changed by those we make our lives with.
In this book, astonishingly intimate poems of marriage collide with the fetishization of freedom and the terror of desire. At times valiant and at others self-excoriating, they are flush with the hard-won knowledge of the difficulties and joys of living in relation.
Keetje Kuipers’ newest collection of poetry, Lonely Women Make Good Lovers, was the recipient of the Isabella Gardner Award. Her poetry and prose have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The American Poetry Review, and POETRY, and have been honored by publication in The Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. She has been a Stegner Fellow, Bread Loaf Fellow, and the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. Kuipers lives with her wife and children in Montana, where she is editor of Poetry Northwest.
Lonely Women Make Good Lovers
Poems
By Keetje Kuipers
Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
April 8, 2025
Language: English
Paperback : 96 pages
ISBN-10: 1960145452
ISBN-13: 978-1960145451
Regular price €17,95
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Gij deed van alle mensen
Gij deed van alle mensen mij
De zwaarste pijn,
Van alle mensen zult ge mij
De liefste zijn.
J.H. Leopold
(1865-1925)
Gij deed van alle mensen
Vroege gedichten
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New Year’s Eve
There are only two things now,
The great black night scooped out
And this fire-glow.
This fire-glow, the core,
And we the two ripe pips
That are held in store.
Listen, the darkness rings
As it circulates round our fire.
Take off your things.
Your shoulders, your bruised throat!
Your breasts, your nakedness!
This fiery coat!
As the darkness flickers and dips,
As the fireflight falls and leaps
From your feet to your lips!
D. H. Lawrence
(1885 – 1930)
New Year’s Eve
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December 31, 2024
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O, als ik dood zal zijn
“O, als ik dood zal, dood zal zijn
kom dan en fluister, fluister iets liefs,
mijn bleeke ogen zal ik opslaan
en ik zal niet verwonderd zijn.
En ik zal niet verwonderd zijn ;
in deze liefde zal de dood
alleen een slapen, slapen gerust
een wachten op u, een wachten zijn.”
En schokkende het grote zwichten
en armen die in vertwijfeling slaan,
een wringen omhoog, een biddend reiken,
een klemmen en jammerend laten gaan.
En een hoofd verwordende en bedolven
in der snikken en in der haren nacht,
wond over ondoorgrondlijke stroomen
vervreemd en doodswit opgebracht.
En een stem verwezen en ingezonken
en die nog stervende aanbad:
ik heb zoo zielsveel van je gehouden,
ik heb je zoo lief, zoo lief gehad.
J.H. Leopold
(1865-1925)
O, als ik dood zal zijn
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Ik ben een zwerver overal
Ik ben een zwerver overal,
een doler en een vagebond
en een, die uit zich zelf geen pad,
geen ommekeer en geen uitweg vond.
Ik ben een napraatpapegaai,
ik ben een open spiegelrond,
des Eeuwigen gesproken woord,
het hapert in mijn stamelmond.
J.H. Leopold
(1865-1925)
Ik ben een zwerver overal
Oostersch IV
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There was an Old Man with a Beard
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, “It is just as I feared!—
Two Owls and a Hen, four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard.
Edward Lear
(1812 – 1888)
There was an Old Man with a Beard
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‘Keen, fitful gusts…’
Keen, fitful gusts are whisp’ring here and there
Among the bushes half leafless, and dry;
The stars look very cold about the sky,
And I have many miles on foot to fare.
Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,
Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,
Or of those silver lamps that burn on high,
Or of the distance from home’s pleasant lair:
For I am brimful of the friendliness
That in a little cottage I have found;
Of fair-hair’d Milton’s eloquent distress,
And all his love for gentle Lycid drown’d;
Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,
And faithful Petrarch gloriously crowned.
John Keats
(1795 – 1821)
‘Keen, fitful gusts…’
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Märchen
Ich hab vor deinem Hause still gestanden
In einer Nacht.
Und hatte ganz dich lieb und ohne Maßen;
Ich wies zu dir den Sternen goldne Straßen
Und habe selig stumm gelacht.
Ob meinem losen Haar hob ich die Arme
Wie Zweige, schlank und rund.
Da stürzte Regen in das Mainachtschweigen
Und rief sich zage Blüten aus den Zweigen,
Und jede war ein blasser Mund.
Du aber kamst nicht.
So streute ich mit lächelndem Verschwenden
Dem Mond die Blumen her.
Und spürte Treiben herber, dunkler Kräfte,
Mir ward die Frucht voll süßer, süßer Säfte;
Schon fiel sie, duftend, weich und schwer.
Du aber kamst nicht.
Eishagel tanzte höhnend auf den Steinen.
Da klaffte schwarz ein Schacht.
Drein ließ ich die zerbrochnen Arme hangen. –
Geblüht und Frucht getragen – und vergangen
In einer Nacht.
Gertrud Kolmar
(1894 – 1943)
Märchen
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