Product Description

This is the first full collection of poems by Kathryn Simmonds. Her's is a fresh, lovely, accessible voice. She confronts the dilemmas of a young woman living in the city with considerable humour and a poignant grace. An element of surrealism often invades her poems, taking from the quotidian to the suddenly unsettling and strange, as when a secretary flies up into space, or a laundrette becomes a place for stripping off skin. She also approaches her themes and characters with an ironic tenderness, as in 'Snug' where world leaders mentioned in the news on a bedside radio are invited to share a nap with the speaker, thereby encouraging world peace. Particularly notable is the way she transforms the mundane, the "lull of 3 o'clock", so that days spent in dull jobs, on the bus, at the photocopier, suddenly become moments of expectation and beauty. In her poems, there is sense that anything might happen - and probably will.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #191300 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 64 pages

Review
Winner of the United Kingdom's prestigious Forward Poetry Prize for best first collection

Jackie Kay
"Quirky, witty, moving Kathryn Simmonds´ gift is to find joy and beauty in unexpected places. She invests the everyday world with an extraordinary luminosity."

Michael Symmons Roberts
"An expansive imagination, a wide formal range, wit and humanity - ´Sunday at the Skin Laundrette´ is a remarkable debut."

Customer Reviews

Simple Eloquence
I am not a frequent poetry reader but this is a delight to which I shall return on a regular basis.

Excellently constructed, it is a series of poems that examine urban life, love and loneliness with a nuanced subtlety and humanity. The language and forms are clear, concise and eloquent.

Nothing seems forced or overly contrived and so it speaks very directly to the reader.

I laughed and cried - which is a rare response from me. I really cannot recommend this collection highly enough.

Brilliant
It was great news for me that this book won the prestigious Forward Prize for a first collection of poetry. It's a compelling vote for a witty, unpretentious, moving, and allusive collection of verse.