Biting My Tongue by Neil Astley
Biting My Tongue speaks in different voices from different countries: mainly Ireland, France, and a breakaway republic. In many-layered poems spoken by women, men and animals, Neil Astley challenges fact and ?ction, subverting assumptions of biography and truth, gender and sexuality, change and transformation. Many of the poems, male and female, echo or play with each other. A recurring voice and constant presence in the book is a young Irishwoman, Rebecca Hayes, whose experiences and imagination set up a dialogue within and around the poems.
His work displays a knack for the idiomatic, a gritty attitude towards power and dispossession and a smart employment of metre and rhythm… Most of these tales of treachery and betrayal, which take thriller clichés and invest them with doubt and emotion, are unsettling in rewarding fashion-- Robert Potts * Guardian *
Astley is most concerned with people who cannot always find a voice, and experiences right at the boundaries of language… What is astonishing, again and again, is the exactness with which he captures their predicaments. -- Julian May * Poetry Review *
It combines imaginative scope, a strong sense of contemporary politics, an interest in gender… If nothing else, the book testifies to Astley’s influence on the prevailing themes and tones of contemporary poetry at Bloodaxe and beyond. At his best, he produces strange, compelling poems. -- Sean O'Brien * Northern Review *
Powerful, dramatic, fiercely disturbing poems… Astley’s world is one created out of a profound sense of incongruence between the act of language and the act of love. -- Anne Stevenson
Astley is most concerned with people who cannot always find a voice, and experiences right at the boundaries of language… What is astonishing, again and again, is the exactness with which he captures their predicaments. -- Julian May * Poetry Review *
It combines imaginative scope, a strong sense of contemporary politics, an interest in gender… If nothing else, the book testifies to Astley’s influence on the prevailing themes and tones of contemporary poetry at Bloodaxe and beyond. At his best, he produces strange, compelling poems. -- Sean O'Brien * Northern Review *
Powerful, dramatic, fiercely disturbing poems… Astley’s world is one created out of a profound sense of incongruence between the act of language and the act of love. -- Anne Stevenson
Neil Astley is editor of Bloodaxe Books, which he founded in 1978. His books include novels, poetry collections and anthologies, most notably those in Bloodaxe's Staying Alive anthology series: Staying Alive (2002), Being Alive (2004), Being Human (2011), and Staying Human (2020), a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation; one collaboration with Brendan Kennelly, The Heavy Bear Who Goes with Me: 100 classic poems with commentary (2022), and three with Pamela Robertson-Pearce, Soul Food: nourishing poems for starved minds (2008), and the DVD-books In Person: 30 Poets (2008) and In Person: World Poets (2017). He has published two novels, The End of My Tether (2002), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award, and The Sheep Who Changed the World (2005), and two poetry collections, Darwin Survivor (1988), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and Biting My Tongue (1995). He received an Eric Gregory Award for his poetry, was given a D.Litt from Newcastle University for his work with Bloodaxe Books, and in 2018 was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He also guest-edited a transatlantic all-poetry issue of the American literary journal Ploughshares, the first such issue in its 43-year history. He lives in the Tarset Valley of Northumberland, England.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781852243364 |
| ISBN 10 | 1852243368 |
| Title | Biting My Tongue |
| Author | Neil Astley |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Bloodaxe Books Ltd |
| Year published | 1995-09-30 |
| Number of pages | 80 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |