Tonguit

by Harry Giles

Overview

Shortlisted for the Forward Prize's 2016 debut collection award, Harry Giles' Tonguit is a moving exploration of identity in Scots, English, and bureaucracy. Politically radical and formally inventive, Tonguit plays at the borders of nationality and sexuality with irreverent affection, questing through languages for a place to speak.

AWARDS

Shortlisted for the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2014
and the Forward Foundation's Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection 2016
A Scottish Review of Books Pick of the Year 2016

PRAISE

"An unusually adventurous and promising collection" -- The Guardian

"Varied experiments amplify Giles' ability to speak to the literati and the casual reader alike" -- The London Magazine

"A thrilling mash-up of mongrel dialect and contemporary vernaculars, giving it inventiveness and freewheeling energy" -- Causeway / Cabhsair

"Tonguit is the best new collection of the year" -- Eildon Tree

"Harry Giles' impressive first collection shows every sign of a particularly Scottish alertness to language, political radicalism and intellectual play... Tonguit shows the sharpest new tongue in Scotland at its most seditious, lively and visionary best." -- WN Herbert

BIOGRAPHY

Harry Giles is from Orkney, Scotland. They write and perform work across poetry, theatre and games, and their work generally happens in the crunchy places where performance and politics get muddled up. They were the 2009 BBC Scotland slam champion, co-direct the live art platform Anatomy, and have toured participatory performances across Europe, North America, New Zealand and Leith. www.harrygiles.org

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781910416051
Publisher:	Stewed Rhubarb Press
Publication date:	02/23/2018
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	80
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.22(d)

Table of Contents

1 Brave

4 Instructions for Behaviour at Border Control

5 Visa Wedding

7 Curriculum

8 Reception

9 Honeymoon

10 Piercings

11 Slash Poem in Which Harry Giles Meets Harry Styles

12 Waffle House Crush

13 Poem in Which Nouns, Verbs and Adjectives have been Replaced by Entries from the Wikipedia Page List of Fantasy Worlds

14 Song for a Lover as Magicicada

15 If You Measure the Distance Between the Teeth They’ll Tell You

16 Pantoum on Reading Wikipedia’s Timeline of the Far Future

18 Hidden Track

19 Maeshowe: Chambered Cairn, Winter Solstice

20 Piazza dei Miracoli

21 Govanhill Baths, July 2013

22 Nicht Shift at the Slipper Baths

23 Blue Ghaists

24 Hoo tae Chap an Ingan

25 In Yer Haunds Thare are Nae Deid Hings

26 The Hairdest Man in Govanhill

28 Strong Female Character

30 Bad Girls

31 Showtime: A Young Lady’s Guide to Vanquishing the Undead

32 Your Strengths

35 Sermon

36 Supercut

39 This is a Customer Security Announcement

40 Here Be

41 The Action of Descending Rapidly from a Height Once the Decision to Land has been Made

42 Alpe d’Huez

44 Saadiyat

50 You Don’t Ever Have to Lose

53 Personal

54 Tae a Cooncillor: On his Clossin Anither Sweemin Puil wi his Cuts

57 Hogmanay

58 Scenes fae a Protest

60 Aald Rede fir Biggin a Kintra: Versions After the Tao Te Ching, September 2014

67 Neither Can we Call this a Begging of Misery

68 Gloamin: Version After Abdel Rahim al-Sheikh

69 Further Drafts

Editorial Reviews

"An unusually adventurous and promising collection" -- The Guardian

"Varied experiments amplify Giles' ability to speak to the literati and the casual reader alike" -- The London Magazine

"A thrilling mash-up of mongrel dialect and contemporary vernaculars, giving it inventiveness and freewheeling energy” -- Causeway/ Cabhsair

"Tonguit is the best new collection of the year”

-- Eildon Tree

"Harry Giles' impressive first collection shows every sign of a particularly Scottish alertness to language, political radicalism and intellectual play... Tonguit shows the sharpest new tongue in Scotland at its most seditious, lively and visionary best." -- WN Herbert

From the Publisher