Black Mascara (Waterproof)

Rosalind Easton

• Publisher: Smith|Doorstop Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781912196418
• eBook ISBN: 9781912196517
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

In Rosalind Easton's lively and inventive debut collection, everyday objects are invested with glamour and drama: a mascara wand and a pair of peacock suede stilettos are brought to life in poems exploring the complexities of relationships, and a Mayfair lingerie store provides the setting for a transformative bra fitting experience. A diverse range of literary and cultural references inspires several poems, with the poet's grandmother coming back to life as a book to 'play intellectual drinking games with Shakespeare', and Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor taking over the running of a secondary school. In other poems, Tilda Swinton's magazine photo shoot as David Bowie sparks an exploration of the relationship between history and identity, and a night at the Shepherd's Bush Empire with Suede becomes a celebration of the enduring power of teenage memories.

Found in Translation

i.m. Nora Newton (1929–2015)

A grandam’s name is little less in love

than is the doting title of a mother;

they are as children but one step below …

Richard III

Of course I should have realised you’d come back

as a book. It was in Hatchards on Piccadilly, in the Classics

section; the shelves were out of alphabetical order –

Galsworthy, Trollope, Austen, Eliot side-by-side.

Just as I was thinking I wonder, I heard

your laugh, and there you were – a slender, sparkling volume,

looking quite at home in such illustrious company,

your handwritten name running down the spine. Evelyn Waugh

was serving at the till. There’s no charge, he said.

She’s been waiting for you. I took you home and put you

next to Dickens and Gaskell, hoping you’d find some people there

you could get on with. In the evenings I’d sit cross-legged on the carpet

with a glass of wine, listening, enthralled, to you in your element:

on the poetry shelf, Milton’s pages ruffled with pride to hear

that you’d learnt Lycidas by heart at seventeen; Wordsworth acknowledged

that your annotations on ‘The Prelude’ had deepened his understanding.

Best of all was the intellectually superior drinking game

with Shakespeare: he’d call out the number of a sonnet,

you’d recite it, word-perfect, your reward a shot of apricot brandy.

You read my childhood favourites to me again, your drama-school voice

(not a trace of Manchester left in it) still just right, somehow, for

The Famous Five and Malory Towers, but I liked your New Jersey drawl

for Judy Blume’s Freckle Juice best, which brought you to the attention

of George Gershwin and Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra

sleeping off champagne hangovers in Biography; the four of you sang

‘Embraceable You’ and ‘Someone to Watch Over Me’ late into the night.

How sad, I thought, that only in death can one keep this kind of company.

And then it struck me: I moved you to Plays. And oh, you were away.

Word spread quickly, and critics queued at my door, squeezed

into every square inch in my small study, climbed lampposts

and garden fences to listen through the open window

to your Lady Bracknell, your Rosalind, your Beatrice –

but also, of course, to your lead role in Coronation Street, and even

the brief stint as first woman pundit on Match of the Day

(you always had the range). I realised then I’d put you in my library

without reading your words, thought I knew your story, that I might

have written bits of it myself. But when I turned your pages

there was your life translated: how you’d skipped rep al...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Found in Translation
• Campagnolo Super Record
• Did I Dent Your Car with My Head?
• Girl as Bike
• Bra Fitting, Mayfair
• Lunchtime on Threadneedle Street
• The Light Museum
• Drinks Party, London Skyline
• The Music Stand
• The Microphone
• The Undiminished Magnificence of Brett Anderson
• Tilda Swinton as David Bowie
• Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor Take Over the Academy
• Backstage
• Closet
• Peacock Suede Stilettos
• Black Mascara (Waterproof)
• Acknowledgements