Bezdelki: Small Things (The Emma Press Picks): 10 - Softcover

Carol Rumens

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910139807 ISBN 13: 9781910139806

Publisher: Emma Press, The, 2018

Synopsis

In Carol Rumens's Bezdelki, small things like the English meaning of her Russian title help to shore up the memory of a life. These elegies for a late partner, written in memory of Yuri Drobyshev, explore the principle that death, even for atheists, isn't purely loss. Instead, a kind of conversation between two people can be continued through willed acts of memory, whether by rooting through incidental artefacts found in a toolbox ('defiant old metals, coupled/irrefutably and awkwardly for life') or by revisiting works of Russian literature that both members of the couple admired. There is a tender goodbye in a hospital, but also the sensual matter of life: yoghurt spoons, stock cubes and duck paté. In Rumens's pamphlet, translations and imitations of Osip Mandelstam share space with fragments of Egyptian mythology and 'a wardrobe of old sweat-shirts' to convey the powerful, and moving, impulse to 'live with your death unburied at my core'.

About this title

About the Author:

Carol Rumens is originally from South London and now lives in North Wales, where she teaches creative writing at Bangor University. She has published sixteen collections of poetry, most recently Animal People (Seren, 2016). Her work appears in many anthologies, including The Best British Poetry (2014) and The Forward Anthology (2016). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and writer of the Guardian's 'Poem of the Week' column.

About this edition

• Publisher: Emma Press, The
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1910139807
• ISBN 13: 9781910139806
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 36
• Editor: Carol Rumens, Rachel Piercey