Dressing for the Afterlife

Maria Taylor

• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781913437015
• eBook ISBN: 9781913437022
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Dressing for the Afterlife is a diamond-tough and tender second collection of poems from British Cypriot poet Maria Taylor, which explores love, life, and how we adapt to the passage of time. From the steely glamour of silent film-star goddesses to moonlit seasons and the ghosts of other possible, parallel lives, these poems shimmy and glimmer bittersweet with humour and brio, as Taylor conjures afresh a world where Joan Crawford feistily simmers and James Bond's modern incarnation is mistaken for an illicit lover.

Consistently crisp and vivid, these poems examine motherhood, heritage and inheritance, finding stories woven in girlhood's faltering dance-steps, the thrum of the sewing-machine at the end-days of the rag trade, or the fizz and bubble of a chip-shop fryer. And throughout, breaking through, is the sense of women finding their wings and taking flight - "and her wings, what wings she has" - as Taylor's own poems soar and defiantly choose their own adventures.

Contents

Prologue

She Ran

I Began the Twenty-Twenties as a Silent Film Goddess

And there she was in the shrunken apartment like Joan Crawford, toy dog on her lap

The Floating Woman

Sand Memoir

Then I Reconsidered Prayer

Aubade with Question Mark

Moon in Gemini

Everything is a fight between winter and spring

Ophelia

The Bee-Bird

Awake in His Castle

Ghosting

Loop

Dear Birthday

The Fields

Head of a Baby

Poem in Which I Lick Motherhood

What It Was Like

The Pavilion

Unfinished Business

Also-ran

Friday At The Moon

Hypothetical

Tracing Orion

The Boyfriend

Learning to Love in Greek

Ante

Christening

The Audience

Learning the Steps

Ferry

Songbird

The Distance

My Stranger

Choose Your Own Adventure

How to Survive a Disaster Movie

The Vale

Mr Alessi Cuts the Grass

Not About Hollywood

Gangsters

Problems with the Idiom

Anna of The Fisheries

Yiayia’s House

Fylingdales

Don vs. the Summer of Love

Role Model

Wearing Red

Ragtrade

Aviary

The Horse

Woman Running Alone

Acknowledgements and Thanks

About the author and this book

Prologue

To dress for the afterlife,

step into the precise moment

you ended a former existence

and zipped yourself into the unknown.

Choose a wedding outfit,

a pair of overalls, an invisibility cloak,

or the national dress of a country

you have never visited before.

This is how you must lear...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Prologue
• She Ran
• I Began the Twenty-Twenties as a Silent Film Goddess
• And there she was in the shrunken apartment like Joan Crawford, toy dog on her lap
• The Floating Woman
• Sand Memoir
• Then I Reconsidered Prayer
• Aubade with Question Mark
• Moon in Gemini
• Everything is a fight between winter and spring
• Ophelia
• The Bee-Bird
• Awake in His Castle
• Ghosting
• Loop
• Dear Birthday
• The Fields
• Head of a Baby
• Poem in Which I Lick Motherhood
• What It Was Like
• The Pavilion
• Unfinished Business
• Also-ran
• Friday at The Moon
• Hypothetical
• Tracing Orion
• The Boyfriend
• Learning to Love in Greek
• Ante
• Christening
• The Audience
• Learning the Steps
• Ferry
• Songbird
• The Distance
• My Stranger
• Choose Your Own Adventure
• How to Survive a Disaster Movie
• The Vale
• Mr. Alessi Cuts the Grass
• Not About Hollywood
• Gangsters
• Problems with the Idiom
• Anna of The Fisheries
• Yiayia’s House
• Fylingdales
• Don vs. the Summer of Love
• Role Model
• Wearing Red
• Ragtrade
• Aviary
• The Horse
• Woman Running Alone
• Acknowledgements and Thanks
• About the author and this book