What The House Taught Us

Poems

Anne Bailey

• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781912915910
• eBook ISBN: 9781912915927
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

You never know how things really are in other people's families, in other people's homes. There's the public face and the private truths – the personal griefs and tragedies, whether festering or resting in peace. In her wry, engagingly strange poems, Anne Bailey takes the door off the latch and lets us inside.

She shows us loss and disappointment, as well as hardness and resilience, particularly through the eyes of a daughter, wife and mother. We see the domestic sphere in such close-up detail that it becomes bizarre, an uncanny dimension that nonetheless rings horribly, weirdly true.

"So you've put a picture on the lovely blank wall
that used to go pink in the sun
and feel like an ice cream.
A wall on which I used to rest my eyes
in pleasant contemplation."
- from 'Domestic'

Table of contents

• Cover
• Other Titles from The Emma Press
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Going off and other kinds of default
• I stare up at the house
• Sudden death
• The problem with magic
• When the lake came
• Concern for Mother
• What I learnt about men
• Dinky the budgerigar
• Beyond these things
• The little girl and the universe
• Mind’s eye
• For the record
• My mother
• How to get the most out of baking
• Domestic
• The sum of the parts
• I Was Struck By Lightning While Ironing
• Uses and abuses of the tea towel
• Did she prefer life as a door?
• A film of dust is how it starts
• The Curator is married to the rain
• Acknowledgements
• About The Poet