Hotels Like Houses E-Book

Sophie Hannah

• Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Sophie Hannah's first book The Hero and the Girl Next Door (Carcanet, 1995), earned her a remarkably big audience: her broadcasts and public readings throughout the country have proved extremely popular. Her poems entertain with a cunning use of traditional form, moving beyond satire to the heart of the modern matter: loves, lusts, losses, worldly foibles, how people see themselves and how others see them, the problems of learning to drive and learning to live with a car. The Poetry Review declared, 'Shall I put it in capitals? SOPHIE HANNAH IS A GENIUS.' Be that as it may, Hotels like Houses provides a new range of romantic ironies, light and dark laughter, for her readership.

Leseprobe

Sophie Hannah

HOTELS LIKE HOUSES

For Jenny with love

Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Three Hundred Years for Me

Where is Talcott Parsons Now?

Do I Look Sick?

In the Bone Densitometry Room

Neither Home Nor Dry

Hotels like Houses

From A to B (when B is miles from A)

Do Detached Houses Want to be Detached?

Altering the Angle

When He’s at Home

Slow Start, Weak End

Two Sonnets

Fair to Say

The During Months

Three Poems About Cars and Driving

The Learner

The Treasurer

Lusting after Walter Knife

To Whom it May Concern at the Whalley Range Driving Test Centre

The Pros and the Cons

Into His Plans

On the Silver Side

Preventative Elegy

Person Specification

The Sight of Mares

Glass Eyebrow

Four Short Poems

She Can Win Favour

Ms Quicksand is a Bitch

Running into Late

The Downfall of Her Oscillating Head

Two Poems About Music

Soft-Handed Man

Selling His Soul

Double That Amount

Ticket to Staines

Postcard from a Travel Snob

His Rising

Loss Adjuster

Two Hundred and Sixty-Five Words

I’ll Give Him This

My Enemies

The Subject and the Object

What You Deserve

All Wrong for Some

Nod and Smile

Pink and the Gang

The Man Who Wouldn’t Share His Garden with a Wolf

Liberation Day

In Layman’s Terms

The Good Loser

A Strong Black Coffee for the Sleeping Dog

Sleep Well

Also by Sophie Hannah from Carcanet

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Some of the poems in this collection first appeared in the following publications: Acumen,TheArgotist,AsGirlsCouldBoast (Oscars Press, 1994), TheBuzz,CriticalSurvey,TheDarkHorse,TheFrogmorePapers,Gunslingers,TheHuddersfieldContemporaryMusicFestivalProgramme1995,TheInterpreter’sHouse,Kent&SussexPoetrySocietyCompetitionAnthology1995,LondonMagazine,TheNorth,TheObserver,Orbis,PNReview,PoetryReview,Prop,TheSecretGarden (Prospero Press, 1996), SmithsKnoll,TheSpectator,Stand and the TimesLiterarySupplement.

‘She Can Win Favour’ was first broadcast on TheMarkRadcliffeShow (BBC Radio One, November 1995), ‘Two Hundred and Sixty-Five Words’ on Radio Wales in December 1995, ‘His Rising’ on Stanza (BBC Radio Four, January 1996), and ‘Postcard from a Travel Snob’ on Postcards (BBC World Service Radio, February 1996).

Three Hundred Years for Me

He spent last summer in a caravan

With four professors and a Polish priest.

He spent this morning with the Seafood Man

And lunchtime at a window cleaners’ feast.

He spent the weekend in a bungalow

Owned by a bloke who used to teach me French.

This evening he’ll be at the early show

Of some new film, then on a cold park bench

With ski instructors from the Cairngorm slopes.

He’ll spend tomorrow in a parking lot

With a Duke’s niece who writes the horoscopes

For women’s magazines. Then, when he’s got

An hour, maybe half an hour free

I’ll make him wait three hundred years for me.

Where is Talcott Parsons Now?

(Talcott Parsons was an American sociologist)

Could a man in your position

Ever love a girl like me?

Would you have to get permission

From the aristocracy?

Just a normal girl, no dowry,

With a house which, at first glance,

Looks like something drawn by Lowry?

Would we ever stand a chance?

Am I utterly deluded

Or could such a love exist?

Would I have to be included

In the Civil Honours List,

Hang about with landed gentry,

Or would access be denied?

Would there be a firm no entry

To all persons from Moss Side?

Are your exes all princesses

Who could spot a pea with ease?

Do they wear designer dresses

And have dinner with MPs?

Are they many times my betters

With their titles, wealth and fame?

Does each one of them have letters

Queueing up beside her name?

Would it be too much to handle?

Would your folks rewrite their wills?

Would it lead, perhaps, to scandal

Or some parliamentary bills?