Ticker-Tape

Rishi Dastidar

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781911027171
• eBook ISBN: 9781911027324
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

From politics to pop, from the UK to California, wherever digital heartbeats flutter and stutter, Ticker-tape is a maximalist take on 21st century living. Rishi Dastidar's first full collection showcases one of contemporary poetry's most distinctive voices, delivering effervescence with equal servings of panache and whiplash-quick wit.

Here is sheer madcap ingenuity and also impressive breadth; ranging from odes of love to deconstructed diversity campaigns and detonations of banter's worst excesses, plus appearances from ex-SugaBabes, a shark who comes to tea, to the matters of matchstick empires and national identity. Ticker-tape is bold, adventuresome and wry – an unmissable and irrepressible debut.

Ticker-tape

She is where she always is at this point, sitting

in the Reverend’s speakeasy, wingtips ascending,

waiting for the minute hand to move. A second

rolls over, becomes a new hour. I hold the tattoo

on her wrist, an outline – all dog legs and squat thrusts,

an obese pigeon unable to take off. She gathers herself:

My ticker-tape, my bracelet, my gimlet,

my green belt handcuff, my tube line, my roundel,

my encapsulation, my malachite collar,

my friend, my lover, my ambition,

my unconquered lands, my Western front, my Eiger,

my undocumented interior, my multiple timezones,

my endless vistas, my temples of display,

my pilgrimage, my refuge, my starting point,

my ever-changing slang, my exclusive code,

my palimpsest, my outline of the me I will become,

my dark market, my light house, my civilization,

my abecedary, my participatory incantation,

my sizzle and steak, my law-giving colophon,

my badge, my totem, my charm of luck,

my disgrace, my downfall, my encampment,

my erstwhile empire, my pier of pleasure,

my denial of service, my white tower,

my hundred crows rising, my convenient alliances,

my enemy of purpose, my flag of convenience,

my restless wanderer, my pulsating imagination,

my time lord, my endless riot, my kin of kin,

my zipless fuck, my zone of disobedience,

my end of the line, my capsule of forgiveness,

my one more for the road, my why-ever-not,

my seized day, my clenched fist,

my tunnels of indifference, my fashion galore,

my daring wonderings, my candy floss, my sugar loss,

my gadget of invention, my caffeine kick, my traction,

my exit wound, my magnificent workshop,

my typeface of command, my minded gap,

my for all, my luxurious lap, my officer of truth,

my light power and speed, my descent to brightness,

my weaponized umbrella, my catchpenny seasons,

my bye-law contraventions, my stolen impressions,

my dynamic dynamite, my matchday rattle, my cup final,

my imperial trial, my undampened enthusiasm,

my peddler’s cries, my hawker’s dilemmas, my bright hours,

my super club, my neon trapeze, my maximum meaning,

my expeditionary force, my pursuit of glee,

my mercenary moods, my mendicant bears,

my subtle delights, my peacock smiles, my rainbow hosts,

my flash exquisites, my hatful of ideologies,

my jumble of engineering, my votive village, my dirtee fowl,

my whistle display, my beak club boys, my typing pool girls,

my meat back room hooks, my variety pack,

my linear portraits, my proud ornaments,

my statuary obfuscations, my way of business,

my moving spirits, my fair fairs, my well-baited hoopla,

my compelling invitation, my misplaced discretion,

my coat of years, my solid comfort, my quirky legend,

my wonderground, my Byronic charm, my Blakean spells,

my Wildean wilds, my Magnificent Ambersons, my herb of work,

my workaday history, my ego limerick, my double-sheet facts,

my mirror-real ticket, my manorial extension, my open system,

my Whitsuntide outing, my sunset sanctuary, my concrete lady,

my silver river, my surfeit resort, my closed conspiracy,

my colour trooping, my oyez sport, my monarchtopolis,

my mother’s promises, my digital handshake,

my dictatorial signature, my distress bleeps,

my transparent telegrams, my constant change,

my ghosts of progress, my administrative burden,

my chains of buffonery, my griffin barriers, my dirty martini,

my impatient regret, my unbound determination,

my differential equations, my regression to the mean,

my standard deviation, my soda siphon, my power ballads,

my tongue thieves, my tied brewers, my spiced negroni,

my stereotypical cliché, my bomber command, my secular hymn,

my paradisal playground, my seducer’s lair, my casino bank,

my pie and mash, my fizzing diamonds, my broadcast booth,

my 78rpm shellacking, my flotilla of pratfalls, my corporate bequest,

my boutique philosophy, my jubilee of consumption, my credit card debt,

my inevitable performance, my battalions of redoubt, my bases of plenty,

my fleet of suns, my bestiary of incompetence, my flood plain of irrelevance,

my balsam hopes, my dockside griefs, my Festival of Britain,

my cistern of rubrics, my incendiary rage, my noblesse oblige,

my revolutions, my force majeure, my manifesto of sorts,

my quack illnesses, my prescriptions of choice, my harlots of nonentity,

my endless parabola, my arc-ing rise and fall,

my one two three four five senses working o-ver-time,

my sniveling politeness, my shopping malls, my pimple’s engagement,

my cybernetic jungle, my Westway curse, my recycled contentments,

my gas bottle bogeys, my party pris vegetables, my discreet seraglio,

my twittering bloodstream, my barbers of togetherness,

my aces of razors, my ruffians of now, my porcupines of pique,

my forced antiquities, my pose of purpose, my entrepreneurial gland,

my reverent mindset, my master of ceremonies, my wild goose chase,

my tame brute attack, my demonic infestation, my bubonic epicentre,

my hyperbolic hymnal, my ministering tides, my big society philippics,

my food bank requests, my sheltering minstre...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Epigraph
• The summers of Camus’ youth
• The Girl Boy Black White Urban Desert Digital Blues Rhinestone Drone Desire
• Trunk shavasana
• Deconstructing an attempted date with Miss Pacific Standard Time
• A shark comes to dinner
• Contour
• From Stavanger
• Doom loop
• “THE PACIFIC OCEAN IS BECOMING CAFFEINATED”
• Matchstick Empire
• 22 March, Working in an Office on Berners Street
• Licking stamps
• Joystick Valhalla
• We are Premier League
• Bantz
• Rave equations
• On enthusiasm
• Making a cheese soufflé rise
• The anniversary issue
• Writ
• All the laurels in the world, and you give me these?
• Sister of the sun
• Towards a singularity
• Ticker-tape
• Redzone
• Cheerleader
• Arguing with Mondrian about space
• Secrets need confidence and force
• The last neon sign maker in Hong Kong
• Code: pink and red and blue
• Gunmetal
• The valley of the infinite
• Pretanic
• The British genius
• #MyEngland
• What’s the matter with [insert (non-metropolitan) English constituency of choice]?
• Diagnosis: ‘Londonism’
• Strategies to save the Union
• Tom Paine’s submarine
• The problem of becoming English
• Point of departure
• A man is on the TV, telling me about
• Risk patterns
• Diversity campaign
• The campaign for mapping generic terms for streams in the contiguous United States
• Methuselah and the Link-Girl
• These things boys do
• What night is
• Theseus’ ship
• Notes
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author & this book