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This changes things
This changes things was Claire Askew's first full collection, coming after years of work in Scotland's flourishing poetry and spoken word scene. Her poems focus on the lives and experiences of women - particularly the socially or economically marginalised - at pains both to empathise and to recognise the limits of this empathy. They embody a need to acknowledge and challenge the poet's privileged position as documenter and outsider, a responsibility to the poem's political message and to that message's human subject. This changes things draws much of its strength from this exploration of inbetweenness. Claire Askew's purposeful deployment of objects, lighting effects and liminal spaces implicates her reader in the poem's argument, holds up a mirror and asks us to pay attention. The book's romantic relationships, depictions of frustrated travel or social mobility, are bound up in its awareness of the systems of power that permit no true state of innocence. Even the final poem, 'Hydra' - with its celebration of the body and its senses - cannot ultimately allow us off the hook. This changes things was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award 2016, Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for First Full Collection 2017 and Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2017.
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This changes things
This changes things was Claire Askew's first full collection, coming after years of work in Scotland's flourishing poetry and spoken word scene. Her poems focus on the lives and experiences of women - particularly the socially or economically marginalised - at pains both to empathise and to recognise the limits of this empathy. They embody a need to acknowledge and challenge the poet's privileged position as documenter and outsider, a responsibility to the poem's political message and to that message's human subject. This changes things draws much of its strength from this exploration of inbetweenness. Claire Askew's purposeful deployment of objects, lighting effects and liminal spaces implicates her reader in the poem's argument, holds up a mirror and asks us to pay attention. The book's romantic relationships, depictions of frustrated travel or social mobility, are bound up in its awareness of the systems of power that permit no true state of innocence. Even the final poem, 'Hydra' - with its celebration of the body and its senses - cannot ultimately allow us off the hook. This changes things was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award 2016, Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for First Full Collection 2017 and Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2017.
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This changes things

This changes things

by Claire Askew
This changes things
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This changes things

This changes things

by Claire Askew

Overview

This changes things was Claire Askew's first full collection, coming after years of work in Scotland's flourishing poetry and spoken word scene. Her poems focus on the lives and experiences of women - particularly the socially or economically marginalised - at pains both to empathise and to recognise the limits of this empathy. They embody a need to acknowledge and challenge the poet's privileged position as documenter and outsider, a responsibility to the poem's political message and to that message's human subject. This changes things draws much of its strength from this exploration of inbetweenness. Claire Askew's purposeful deployment of objects, lighting effects and liminal spaces implicates her reader in the poem's argument, holds up a mirror and asks us to pay attention. The book's romantic relationships, depictions of frustrated travel or social mobility, are bound up in its awareness of the systems of power that permit no true state of innocence. Even the final poem, 'Hydra' - with its celebration of the body and its senses - cannot ultimately allow us off the hook. This changes things was shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award 2016, Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for First Full Collection 2017 and Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2017.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781780372761
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
Publication date: 01/28/2016
Pages: 72
Product dimensions: 5.20(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Claire Askew was born in 1986 and grew up in the rural Scottish borders. She has lived in Edinburgh since 2004, and holds a PhD in Creative Writing & Contemporary Women's Poetry from the University of Edinburgh. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian, Poetry Scotland, PANK, The Edinburgh Review and Be The First To Like This: New Scottish Poetry (Vagabond Voices, 2014), and have been selected twice for the Scottish Poetry Library's Best Scottish Poems of the Year. In 2013 she won the International Salt Prize for Poetry, and in 2014 was runner-up for the inaugural Edwin Morgan Poetry Award for Scottish poets under 30 for an earlier version of This changes things, which was published by Bloodaxe in 2016. She was shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award for a second time in 2016. This changes things was also shortlisted for the Saltire Society First Book of the Year Award 2016, and Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for First Full Collection 2017 and Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2017. She runs the One Night Stanzas blog, and collects old typewriters (she currently has around 30). In 2016 she became Edinburgh's first 'Reading Champion', the first writer to be appointed by the Scottish Book Trust to one of four such posts based in Scottish libraries to stimulate and deliver innovative projects around reading in different parts of Scotland. In 2017 she was the first writer to receive the inaugural Jessie Kesson Fellowship.

Table of Contents

Dukkha 9

I

I'm sorry I'm still in love with my grandmother 12

Big heat 13

Anne Askew's ashes 15

Hometown 16

High school 17

The lucky little girls 19

Catalogue of my grandmother's sayings 21

To Wakefield 22

Visiting Nannie Gray 23

Frank 24

Spitfires 26

Going next 27

Thing about death 29

Poltergeistrix 31

The minister sees the monster 33

Picker 34

Onion 36

Privilege 101 37

Fire Comes 39

II

The axe of the house 43

I Hacksaw and burn 43

II In the dream 44

III Deafening 45

IV Mary tells you about the break-in 46

V Housewarming 47

VI The axe 48

Rescue industry 49

Royal Mile, the day after the vote 50

Seefew steading 51

Orcas Island 52

Highway: Skagit County, WA 53

Greyhound, Seattle to San Francisco 54

The western night 56

Parisian hostel 58

Witch 60

Barcelona diptych 62

The picture in your mind when you speak of whores 64

Mothership 65

Bad moon 67

Stephen in Waitrose 68

Hydra 69

Acknowledgements 71

From the B&N Reads Blog
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Related Subjects

Poetry
European Poetry
Other European Poetry
Continental European * Poetry
Poetry
European Poetry
Other European Poetry
Continental European * Poetry

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