Furniture

By Lorraine Mariner

Lorraine Mariner has long been one of the less well-guarded secrets in UK poetry, and her many admirers will be delighted by the appearance of her first full-length collection. Sometimes reading like an unholy alliance of Dorothy Parker, Stevie Smith and Frank O’Hara – but more often like nothing the reader will have encountered before – Mariner’s poetry is sharp, quirky, disarming, disorientating, deceptively skilful and frequently hilarious. Her gift is to reveal how much of the everyday is purely surreal, and to articulate the strange and fleeting thoughts we often have, but rarely have the nerve or quick-wittedness to voice. Furniture is the work of an exciting and fresh new imagination in contemporary poetry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Feb 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9780330505215

Lorraine Mariner

Lorraine Mariner was born in 1974 and lives in London where she works at the Poetry Library, Southbank Centre. Her collection Furniture was published by Picador in 2009 and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize.

Book preview

is.

Assertiveness role play

I am your work colleague, neighbour and friend.

I have a dog. I’m always going away for the weekend

and expect you to look after my dog which means

you can’t go anywhere. You’ve had enough.

I say Hi Michael. How are you? You say Fine.

I say I’m off to Rome. You say That’s nice.

I say I’ll drop Rover round on Friday. You say No

and use your broken record; Lorraine, I’m sorry,

I’m not going to look after your dog any more.

I want to be free at the weekend. I’m supposed to

keep asking and you’re supposed to keep saying

I’m not going to look after your dog again

but instead you touch my leg and say Ok

bring round your dog. How can I refuse you?

The trainer is not impressed. She doesn’t think

you’re taking this course seriously. The other pairs

are still in role so we have time to kill and I ask you

if you like dogs but you don’t because of a stupid

Afghan Hound you had as a child, while the part of me

deep inside that knows what it wants says

Forget my dog. He’s a figment of the trainer’s imagination.

You are not. I noticed when we had to share one thing

we like to do at the start of the course, yours was going

to an Italian class. Well, I’m learning the language too

only I didn’t like to say in case you thought

I was making it up but . . . vieni a Roma con me.

This will be my broken record; Come with me to Rome.

I’ve never been and the ice cream I’m planning to eat

on the Spanish Steps is too big for one.