Self-Portrait with the Happiness

David Tait

• Publisher: Smith|Doorstop Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781910367001
• eBook ISBN: 9781910367261
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Part self-portrait, part love affair, the poems in Self-Portrait with The Happiness are obsessed with moments elsewhere. Rural England contends with immense Chinese cities via Thailand and Japan. The effect is a collection which craves the exotic in the everyday: puppeteers communicating through their puppets, sonnets sketched on the snowy rooftops of cars and Chinese dragons flying above the Lakeland fells.
David Tait is one of the most exciting new voices in contemporary poetry, and this eagerly awaited collection confirms the promise of his pamphlet, Love's Loose Ends, which won the Poetry Business Competition, judged by Simon Armitage.

Self-Portrait with The Happiness

David Tait

Acknowledgements

I’d like to thank the editors of the following journals who kindly published some of these poems: Ambit, The Bastille, The Cadaverine, Eunoia Review, The Interpreter’s House, Magma, The North, Poetry Proper, Poetry Review, The Rialto and Stand.

A selection of these poems were included in the pamphlets Love’s Loose Ends (smith|doorstop) and Suitcase/Earthquake (Erbacce).

‘North York Moor’ was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2011.

The poem ‘Self-Portrait with the Calmness’ was translated into Spanish and thrown out of a helicopter during the Poetry Parnassus ‘Rain of Poems’.

My poem ‘The Lengths’ took its starting point from Carole Bromley’s poem ‘A Candle for Lesley’.

Some of these poems were also published in the following anthologies: Rain of Poems London 2012 (Casagrande), The Sheffield Anthology (smith|doorstop), Versions of the North (Five Leaves Press) and CAST: The Poetry Business Book of New Contemporary Poets (smith|doorstop).

Thanks also to Lin Yusi for letting me use his picture, ‘Dandelion’, for the cover image of this book.

Published 2014 by

smith|doorstop Books

The Poetry Business

Bank Street Arts

32-40 Bank Street

Sheffield S1 2DS

www.poetrybusiness.co.uk

Copyright © David Tait 2014

Digital Edition © 2015

ISBN 978-1-...

Table of contents

• Puppets
• Self-Portrait with The Dead
• Elsewhere
• The night my grandfather died
• The Stars and the Dragon
• Northern Lights
• Self-Portrait with the Moon
• New in Love
• Heart
• Postbox
• Self-Portrait with Headtorch
• Of Arrival
• Spring Snow
• Flowerpots
• Self-Portrait with Corridor
• North York Moor
• Self-Portrait with God
• On Being Trapped Inside a Puddle
• The Launderette on Autumn Street
• Edits
• Self-Portrait with The Happiness
• Self-Portrait in Tears
• Dust
• The Crying Men
• The Election and the Black Snow
• Unforgetting Paris
• Self-Portrait with the Sadness
• Green Oranges
• Death of a Lighthouse
• The Peacock in their Shed
• The Piano
• The Pelicans
• The Lengths
• The Handover
• Českỳ Krumlov
• Sonnet in the Snow
• Afterthought
• Of Departure
• Self-Portrait with Overhead Cables
• End Credits
• About the Author