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Epub ISBN: 9781448138869
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Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Vintage Publishing,
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Copyright © Neil Rollinson 2015
Neil Rollinson has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Jonathan Cape in 2015
www.vintage-books.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Like Neil Rollinson’s earlier books, Talking Dead is a refreshment of the senses: lifting the lid on the human condition in a heartfelt celebration of the act of being, whether in moments of love or mortality, sex or feasting.
In the central sequence of the book – a meditation on the space between life and death – the dead speak of their final earthly moments with a liberating sense of fascination, and a luminous awe. Elsewhere we enjoy al fresco sex, astronomy via many pints in the Cat and Fiddle, and the deliverance of an Indian monsoon after weeks of thirst and drought. In ‘Christmas in Andalucia’ two lovers Skype each other achingly across hundreds of miles – ‘I am full of loss and longing,’ the poet says, ‘the heart is hewn from elm and oak and mistletoe.’
As provocative, sensual and subversive as ever, these poems seek and find the numinous in the everyday: some element of ritual or wonder that transforms experience. Although the spectre of darkness is never far away, it is the spirit of pleasure that endures, and we discover to our delight, as D. H. Lawrence did, that the Dionysian finally prevails over the Apollonian.
Neil Rollinson has published three collections: A Spillage of Mercury (1996), Spanish Fly (2001) and Demolition (2007). He is a past winner of the National Poetry Competition (1997) and recently received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors. He lives and works in Brighton.
A Spillage of Mercury
Spanish Fly
Demolition
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Neil Rollinson
Dedication
Title Page
Epigraph
Talking Dead – The Wall
Ode to a Magnolia Tree
Christmas in Andalucia
Bartolo Cattafi: Winter Figs
Talking Dead – Blackbird
Picnic
Ode to a Piss
The Bible
Antonio Machado: Night
Dirty Water
Monsoon
Ganges
Mother-Die
Gerbil
Noobs
The Very Small Baseline Group Convenes at the Cat and Fiddle
Talking Dead – The Office
Evening in Axarquía
Talking Dead – Head-Shot
Cuckoo Pint
The Storm
Chesed Shel Emet
Feathers
In the LRB Bookshop
X-Ray Specs
Bartolo Cattafi: Ingress
Talking Dead – The Good Old Days
Antonio Machado: Midnight
Stinkhorn
The Coffee Variations
Talking Dead – The Bed
The Tzarina
Talking Dead – The Oak
Foal
Starling