Trawlerman's Turquoise

by Matthew Caley

Overview

Trawlerman’s Turquoise, Matthew Caley’s sixth collection, features various seemingly recherché elements – telepathy, Madame Blavatsky, epistolary novels, muse worship, Balzac’s coffee addiction and Thomas Merton’s accidental electrocution amongst them – not always as straightforward ‘subject matter’, but caught up in the backdraft of the poems’ acceleration. The book’s title derives from the long, central, hyper-associative poem, ‘from The Foldings’ – trawlerman’s turquoise being a phrase to describe a psychic glimpse of the ocean for perennial inner-city dwellers who have only ever heard rumour of one. Caley’s lyrics and love poems are poised between sincerity and its inverse, and a seeming ‘parallel world’, which gradually emerges, sits at odds with, and sheds light on, the current state of our actual world – full of melting borders, random dangers, shifting identities, misread communiqués, false reports and information overload – destabilising and exhilarating in equal measure.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780374895
Publisher:	Bloodaxe Books
Publication date:	09/26/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	79
File size:	370 KB

About the Author

Matthew Caley’s Thirst (Slow Dancer, 1999) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. He’s published five more since, three with Bloodaxe, Apparently (2010), Rake (2016), and Trawlerman’s Turquoise (2019), his sixth. His work has featured in many anthologies including Poems of the Decade (Forward Worldwide, 2011), Identity Parade: New British and Irish Poetry (Bloodaxe Books, 2010) and The Picador Book of Love Poems (Picador, 2011). He’s read his work from Morden Tower, Newcastle, to the National Portrait Gallery, London; from Galway to Novi Sad. In previous lives he was on the fringe of the Small Press revival in the 1980s; designed record sleeves; lived in squats in Brixton during the 80s–90s; and has taught in art schools. Recently, he’s tutored for the Poetry School and taught Contemporary Poetry/Creative Writing at the School of English, University of St Andrews. He lives in London with the Czech artist Pavla Alchin and their two daughters, Iris and Mina.

Table of Contents

The Vltava 9

Thaw 10

Stendhal Syndrome 13

In Praise of Turkish Coffee 14

5.00 a.m. 16

Epistolary Novels 17

Aloes Démaquillant 19

Summoning Spell 20

Telepathy 21

Bay Tree on Turner Street 23

from Aphid Soliloquies 25

The Crossing 27

Don't Touch that Heater 28

Training at Altitude 31

The Pub Crawl [Slight Return] 33

The Level 36

from The Foldings 37

The Trap 56

The Glaziers 58

Line Lengths 59

The Nomads 60

Wake Up 62

Spring Fever 63

And the Horse in Each Movement 65

The Weight 67

The Waterfall 68

Basilisk 69

Meadow Saffrons 70

Slow Blow Job 72

The Truce 75

Dear Directeur 76

My Beautiful Comrade from the North 77

[Prayer for] The Frazzled 79

Editorial Reviews

Decidedly indecorous, Caley's vocabulary pricks his readers to keep the action anachronistic and contemporary… the book is a Waste Land of sorts, punctuated with Pound-like fragments…carefully [meticulously] crafted.' - Edwina Attlee, The Poetry Review, on Rake

From the Publisher