Timed Exposure

At the eleventh hour in the empty quarter
we stand and watch our shadows
spinning on the clock clock face of the sand.

We are the dunes, the Chiltern hudnreds,
ash and lilac, oak and beech wood
made by all the women of your family.

Our room is as full as a quarrel, as empty
as a child with the windows out. Clouds
of our old clothes race across the floor.

We aree not even the stars. the lid of our house
is off, and in the lava trail of tail-lights on the hill
we must make all our journeys over again.

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

'Prince Rupert's drop', a rare curiosity of the glass-making process, is a tear of glass at once immensely resilient yet spectacularly fragile, exploding dramatically when shattered. This tension - between the present beauty and the sense of inevitable loss inherent in the things we most admire - is a key to many of the poems in Jane Draycott's work, particularly to the long central poem 'Braving the Dark', written after her brother's death from AIDS at the age of 30.

This is Jane Draycott's first collection of poems. It follows a pamphlet, No Theatre, that was a first-stage winner of the Poetry Business Competition (1996) and was most unusually shortlisted for the Forward Prize in 1997. She is also the co-author of Christina the Astonishing (Two Rivers Press, 1998).

Jane Draycott has lived and taught in London, Strasbourg and Tanzania, and was for a while co-director of a small theatre company, Four Corners. She now works in adult education and lives in Oxfordshire.

Table of Contents

When I woke, the darkest dreams continued

Silence, Drift, Aeroplane

Braving the Dark

Jacob Wrestles with the Angel

Foreign Bodies

Amateur Radio

In Memory of Henry West

Surveillance

Riot

On the Demolition of the Regal

Prince Rupert's Drop

Wedding Breakfast

from Christina the Astonishing

   1. The Levitation of St Christina

   2. The Tunnel

   3. Salvation as a Diving-Suit

   4. St Christina Settles Down in a Convent after her

      Miraculous Time as a Bird

   5. Relic

Elbow

Land Girl

War Widow

Call-Up

The Tea-Makers

Dior Fashion-Plate

Lady Grange on St Kilda

No Theatre

Theatrophone

The Cutting-Room

Cosmonaut

The Pathologist and the National Trust

Tita and Disraeli

Summer Exhibition

Dig

Thyme

Public Footpath

Ogress

Timed Exposure

The First Week

We All Know that You're Going

Bathrooms

Trident Papa India

Admission

What matters