- 240 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
About this book
Humour, gender, sexuality, sensuality, identity, racism, cultural difference: when do any of these things ever come together to equal poetry? When Jackie Kay's part of the equation. Darling brings together into a vibrant new book many favourite poems from her four Bloodaxe collections, "The Adoption Papers", "Other Lovers", "Off Colour" and "Life Mask", as well as featuring new work, some previously uncollected poems, and some lively poetry for younger readers. Kay's poems draw on her own life and the lives of others to make a tapestry of voice and communal understanding. The title of her acclaimed short story collection, "Why Don't You Stop Talking", could be a comment on her own poems, their urgency of voice and their recognition of the urgency in all voice, particularly the need to be heard, to have voice. And what voice -- the voices of the everyday, the voices of jazz, the voices of this many-voiced United Kingdom.
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Please note we cannot support devices running on iOS 13 and Android 7 or earlier. Learn more about using the app.
Yes, you can access Darling by Jackie Kay in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Poetry. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.
Information
PART ONE: 1961–1962
Chapter 1: The Seed
I never thought it would be quicker
than walking down the mainstreet
I want to stand in front of the mirror
swollen bellied so swollen bellied
The time, the exact time
for that particular seed to be singled out
I want to lie on my back at night
I want to pee all the time
amongst all others
like choosing a dancing partner
I crave discomfort like some women
crave chocolate or earth or liver
Now these slow weeks on
I can’t stop going over and over
I can’t believe I’ve tried for five years
for something that could take five minutes
It only took a split second
not a minute or more.
I want the pain
the tearing searing pain
I want my waters to break
like Noah’s flood
I want to push and push
and scream and scream.
When I was sure I wrote a short note
six weeks later – a short letter
He was sorry; we should have known better
He couldn’t leave Nigeria.
I missed him, silly things
his sudden high laugh,
His eyes intense as whirlwind
the music he played me
Chapter 2: The Original Birth Certificate
I say to the man at the desk
I’d like my original birth certificate
Do you have any idea what your name was?
Close, close he laughs. Well what was it?
So slow as torture he discloses bit by bit
my mother’s name, my original name
the hospital I was born in, the time I came.
Outside Edinburgh is soaked in sunshine
I talk to myself walking past the castle.
So, so, so, I was a midnight baby after all.
I am nineteen
my whole life is changing
On the first night
I see her shuttered eyes in my dreams
I cannot pretend she’s never been
my stitches pull and threaten to snap
my own body a witness
leaking blood to sheets, milk to shirts
On the second night
I’ll suffocate...
Table of contents
- Cover
- Description
- Title Page
- Epigraph
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- Table of Contents
- My Grandmother
- The Adoption Papers (1991)
- Key
- PART ONE: 1961–1962
- PART TWO: 1967–1971
- PART THREE: 1980–1990
- Severe Gale 8 (1991)
- Other Lovers (1993)
- Off Colour (1998)
- Life Mask (2005)
- Two’s Company (1992)
- Three Has Gone (1994)
- The Frog Who Dreamed She Was an Opera Singer (1998)
- Red, Cherry Red (2007)
- New Poems (2007)
- About the Author
- Copyright