Carcanet Press - Missel-Child

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Missel-Child

The lady of the moon is in travail,
her white face waxen as the missel-fruit.

The gravelled path gives way to broken angles,
burials of water. Follow it.

Creep into the hospice of the yew,
its pale lying-place. Curl up there. Wait.

According to the seventeenth-century herbarium The Garden of Eden, a ‘missel-child’ is a mysterious being found beneath a mistletoe-covered tree – a changeling, perhaps, ‘whereof many strange things are conceived’. Helen Tookey’s first full collection of poems starts from the missel-child to explore archaeologies of identity, place and language. She is a formally inventive writer, using collage and syllabics, exploring elegy and myth. The poems in this book create a space in which language enables something to be said and also to be shown.

Then is it true

At Burscough, Lancashire

Prints

Estuarine

Shavuot

Cockleshells

Poem for Sabine

Magnolia

Among Alphabets

Fox-Seers

Autumn Child

Missel-Child

Unadopted

Funeral and Fox

At the Castle

Water, its Voicings

Katherine

In a Richer Mine

Shilling Visit

Cedar

Among the Gods (Persephone)

III

Male Nude by R.B. Kitaj

Mono

Portrait of a Young Woman

With Joe on Silver Street

Der Tod in Venedig

The Hardened Criminals of Tomorrow

When I was quite small I would sometimes dream

Miss Yamada Has Gotten Married

America

A long war, and now the returning

Fosse Way

Hollow Meadows

Persephone in Adiyaman

Philadelphus

Rheidol Valley

Priest

Heron

In the dying days of the year we walked

Secret Name

Climbing the Hill at Sunset

Notes

Helen Tookey was born near Leicester in 1969. She is�now based in Liverpool, where she teaches creative writing at Liverpool�John Moores University. She studied philosophy and English literature at university, and has published critical work about writers including Anaïs Nin and Malcolm Lowry. Her debut collection Missel-Child (Carcanet, 2014) was shortlisted ... read more

Awards won by Helen Tookey Short-listed, 2019 The Forward Prize for Best Collection (City of Departures) Short-listed, 2015 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection (Missel-Child)

'Missel-Child is an exceptional volume. Some of the subject-matter is found, some comes from a powerful and intelligent imagination and from keen observation. All is embodied in a language that is sensuous and strong.'
Jeffrey Wainwright 'The diction is unexpected, apt and deeply satisfying, focusing the reader not only on the words chosen, but also on the ghosts and resonances of those that might have been there.'
Carola Luther 'Her quiet, precise poems have a genuine eeriness. She has interests in both archaeology and psychology, but knows intuitively that they aren't separate -- that when we dig up the past it's our own roots we are looking at.'
Grevel Lindop Praise for Helen Tookey 'Narratives describing strange, sometimes dreamlike, episodes from a female protagonist's childhood dominate the second section of Helen Tookey's four-part collection of poems and prose poems, City of Departures ... The narrative is clear and secretive at the same time: it prompts questions.'

Carol Rumens from The Guardian where 'In the Rose Garden' was poem of the week on 3^rd Feb 2020

'For Helen Tookey, place becomes a series of intense encounters with the territories of European artists, in which their settings or personalities - and the poet's - mingle or erode... The book combines poems and prose in a compelling zone of stark atmospheres and richly observed interiors.'

W. N. Herbert, The Poetry Review

'The poems are finely crafted and closely observed, describing somewhat unsettling, dream-like landscapes and places of memory, deserted streets in European cities, or taking artworks and objects as inspiration and points of departure... [The] rejection of borders is a fitting ending to a collection that challenges formal and aesthetic boundaries, and engages with a range of European artistic influences to offer a vision of 'belonging as not-belonging' in the face of certain and chaotic political times.'

Sophie Baldock, The Manchester Review

'Reading this book can feel like sliding into that sunken world. Strange things float beneath its beautiful surfaces'
Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph
'The city in Tookey's City of Departures is full of the excitements of history and chance, and the chances taken to make a kind of radiant sense of the world, in all its breakings-down and might-have-beens, which is exactly what, time and again, these beautiful poems do.'
Jacob Polley

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Missel-Child Helen Tookey RRP: GBP 9.95 Discount: 10% You Save: GBP 0.99 Price: GBP 8.96 Available This title is available for academic inspection (paperback only). Paperback ISBN: 978 1 847772 18 3 Categories: 21st Century, British, First Collections, Women Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Published: January 2014 211 x 140 x 8 mm 80 pages Publisher: Carcanet Press Also available in: eBook (Kindle), eBook (EPUB), eBook (PDF) Description Excerpt Author Contents Awards Reviews Missel-Child The lady of the moon is in travail, her white face waxen as the missel-fruit. The gravelled path gives way to broken angles, burials of water. Follow it. Creep into the hospice of the yew, its pale lying-place. Curl up there. Wait. According to the seventeenth-century herbarium The Garden of Eden, a ‘missel-child’ is a mysterious being found beneath a mistletoe-covered tree – a changeling, perhaps, ‘whereof many strange things are conceived’. Helen Tookey’s first full collection of poems starts from the missel-child to explore archaeologies of identity, place and language. She is a formally inventive writer, using collage and syllabics, exploring elegy and myth. The poems in this book create a space in which language enables something to be said and also to be shown. I Then is it true At Burscough, Lancashire Prints Estuarine Shavuot Cockleshells Poem for Sabine Magnolia Among Alphabets Fox-Seers Autumn Child II Missel-Child Unadopted Funeral and Fox At the Castle Water, its Voicings Katherine In a Richer Mine Shilling Visit Cedar Among the Gods (Persephone) III Male Nude by R.B. Kitaj Mono Portrait of a Young Woman With Joe on Silver Street Der Tod in Venedig The Hardened Criminals of Tomorrow When I was quite small I would sometimes dream Miss Yamada Has Gotten Married America A long war, and now the returning IV Fosse Way Hollow Meadows Persephone in Adiyaman Philadelphus Rheidol Valley Priest Heron In the dying days of the year we walked Secret Name Climbing the Hill at Sunset Notes Helen Tookey was born near Leicester in 1969. She is�now based in Liverpool, where she teaches creative writing at Liverpool�John Moores University. She studied philosophy and English literature at university, and has published critical work about writers including Anaïs Nin and Malcolm Lowry. Her debut collection Missel-Child (Carcanet, 2014) was shortlisted ... read more Awards won by Helen Tookey Short-listed, 2019 The Forward Prize for Best Collection (City of Departures) Short-listed, 2015 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection (Missel-Child) 'Missel-Child is an exceptional volume. Some of the subject-matter is found, some comes from a powerful and intelligent imagination and from keen observation. All is embodied in a language that is sensuous and strong.' Jeffrey Wainwright 'The diction is unexpected, apt and deeply satisfying, focusing the reader not only on the words chosen, but also on the ghosts and resonances of those that might have been there.' Carola Luther 'Her quiet, precise poems have a genuine eeriness. She has interests in both archaeology and psychology, but knows intuitively that they aren't separate -- that when we dig up the past it's our own roots we are looking at.' Grevel Lindop Praise for Helen Tookey 'Narratives describing strange, sometimes dreamlike, episodes from a female protagonist's childhood dominate the second section of Helen Tookey's four-part collection of poems and prose poems, City of Departures ... The narrative is clear and secretive at the same time: it prompts questions.' Carol Rumens from The Guardian where 'In the Rose Garden' was poem of the week on 3^rd Feb 2020 'For Helen Tookey, place becomes a series of intense encounters with the territories of European artists, in which their settings or personalities - and the poet's - mingle or erode... The book combines poems and prose in a compelling zone of stark atmospheres and richly observed interiors.' W. N. Herbert, The Poetry Review 'The poems are finely crafted and closely observed, describing somewhat unsettling, dream-like landscapes and places of memory, deserted streets in European cities, or taking artworks and objects as inspiration and points of departure... [The] rejection of borders is a fitting ending to a collection that challenges formal and aesthetic boundaries, and engages with a range of European artistic influences to offer a vision of 'belonging as not-belonging' in the face of certain and chaotic political times.' Sophie Baldock, The Manchester Review 'Reading this book can feel like sliding into that sunken world. Strange things float beneath its beautiful surfaces' Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph 'The city in Tookey's City of Departures is full of the excitements of history and chance, and the chances taken to make a kind of radiant sense of the world, in all its breakings-down and might-have-beens, which is exactly what, time and again, these beautiful poems do.' Jacob Polley You might also be interested in: The Republic of the Husband Lucy Tunstall Arguing with Malarchy Carola Luther	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! 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