Both - Softcover

Steven Blyth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0956814433 ISBN 13: 9780956814432

Publisher: Smokestack Books, 2011

Synopsis

Steven Blyth writes in praise of domesticity, of the triumphs and failures of a life defined by family, friends, work and love. He watches himself as a son, a lover, a husband, a dad and an office middle manager, exploring the small disappointments and large hopes just below the surface of everyday living. Both is partly a hymn to a 1970s childhood spent in Sunday-school and school, playgrounds and parks, to old girlfriends, parents, neighbours, uncles, great grandmas and aunts `three-million times removed'. It's also a book about Masculinity and Class, family Christmases and Corporate Strategy meetings. It's a Carry On film, `the sort in which characters / Chortle, chuckle, guffaw, giggle or titter, / But never really laugh.'Steven Blyth follows in the footsteps of fellow Northern Realists Jim Burns, Geoff Hattersley, Peter Sansom and Ian McMillan down Dead Pan Alley to explain how time and memory work against relationships, how we are constructed by shared memories, unspoken arguments and secrets, and how beneath its rows, resentments and worries, family life constantly reveals its peculiar sense of belonging and happiness.

About this title

About the Author

Steven Blyth was born in 1968 in Bolton and now lives in Manchester. For many years he edited the magazine Prop. He has published five previous books of poetry, The Gox (Redbeck, 1996), Baddy (Peterloo, 1997), So (Peterloo, 2001) and Mr Right (Shoestring, 2011). He works in local government.

Edition details

• Publisher: Smokestack Books
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0956814433
• ISBN 13: 9780956814432
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 64