Selected Poems (Salt Modern Poets) - Hardcover

Pitt-Kethley, Fiona

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1844714535 ISBN 13: 9781844714537

Publisher: Salt Publishing, 2008

Synopsis

This superb selection of Fiona Pitt-Kethley’s much celebrated poetry portrays an unusual life but also celebrates the things that all women, and all human beings, have in common (mainly sex). Incidents from Pitt-Kethley’s own life are used as a microcosm to portray greater truths. Her frank and at times erotic work is shocking, flagrant and bitingly funny.

About this title

About the Author

Fiona Pitt-Kethley was born in 1954. She studied at the Chelsea School of Art where she obtained a BA hons. before going on to become a full-time writer. As a student she ushered at the Old Vic and National Theatre. While writing she sometimes worked as a film extra. She married the chess grandmaster and former Britrish chess champion, James Plaskett, in 1995. They have a son Alexander. In 2002 they moved to Spain. At first they lived in an ex-pat area until driven out by tyre-slashing English and Irish pensioners. They are now much happier living amongst the Spanish in Cartagena. Since moving to Spain Fiona acquired new hobbies. She practices Kyokushin karate and goes rock-hunting and hill-walking in the Sierra Minera, an area she is currently writing a book on. She also enjoys fishing for her dinner, listening to local Flamenco concerts and snorkels for several months of the year.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Sex Objects

I learned from a friend’s porno mag that men
can buy the better class of plastic doll,
(posh ones are hard and unyielding, not the
pneumatic sort that fly from windows when
they’re pricked), in slow instalments, torso first.

Well-qualified in wanking, Mark saves up
his pennies till they grow to pounds and then
invests in Ingrid, just the body, for
his carnal press-ups?―?a bit too flesh-pink
for human and she sports a ridgy seam
where back meets front. Mark humanises her?―
steals her a black lace bra that doesn’t fit,
(he’s not that used to seeing naked tits),
and puts a cover of a Cosmo girl
up on the pillow where his doll’s neck ends.

Six months on, tired of screwing her pink trunk,
he spends his pocket money on a head.
A bald one comes by post, mouth a red 0.
He buys his girl a man-made fibre wig,
and, graduating to fellation, talks
about her to his friends.

He gets the arms for Christmas and soon gives
his doll a voice, a steamy tape?; he’s good
at it by now, he thinks, and she should tell
him so. The tape’s a great success at first,
until he starts to get the timing wrong,
and Ingrid, moaning says ‘It’s wonderful’?―
after he’s gone.

Mark’s not a legs-man, so these limbs come last?―
a duty?―?something to hook round his back.
He’s shocked when they arrive?―?one black, one white.
The firm’s in liquidation and could just

supply him with the halves of two whole pairs.
(The black’s from ‘Sonia’, another doll.)

That limb cures his Pygmalionitis quite.
He starts to look for human girls to fuck,
but finds they usually need persuasion first,
their fannies aren’t so neatly set in front and,
unlike Ingrid, they can criticise.

Edition details

• Publisher: Salt Publishing
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1844714535
• ISBN 13: 9781844714537
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 144