Pretend You Don't Know Me: New and Selected Poems

By Finuala Dowling

Pretend You Don’t Know Me brings together in one volume the best of Finuala Dowling’s funny, poignant and idiosyncratic poetry from four earlier prize-winning collections, with a section devoted to new poems. It introduces this popular South African poet to a UK audience.

Finuala Dowling’s debut collection, I flying, published in 2002, was an instant success in her native South Africa. Its accessibility, humanity and wit, as well as its beguilingly honest stories of home, parenthood, love, loss and desperation, won many new converts to poetry. The volume went into multiple printings, and won the Ingrid Jonker prize. Dowling’s subsequent collections, Doo-Wop Girls of the Universe and Notes from the Dementia Ward (winners of the SANLAM and Olive Schreiner prizes respectively), consolidated her reputation as an inventive sketcher of the domestic sublime. Her chapbook, Change is possible, sold out at the 2014 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.

Pretend You Don’t Know Me contains her iconic poem ‘To the doctor who treated the raped baby and who felt such despair’ as well as Dowling’s tragi-comic cycle of poems on the theme of her mother’s dementia, and the hugely popular poems ‘Butter’, ‘I am the Zebra’, ‘To adventurers, as far as I’m concerned’ and ‘The abuse of cauliflowers’. At the heart of the book are the funny and poignant connections we make with other people, and the lifelong effort to stay whole.

‘Dowling is redefining poetry, bringing her distinctive voice and wit to bear on a medium so often stuck in moody, broody times.’ – Arja Slafranca, The Star

‘Finuala Dowling is a brave new voice in South African poetry, filled with vitality, wit, unexpected rhythms and fresh ideas… Always accessible, Dowling’s poetry is never shallow.’ – Shirley Kossick,Mail&Guardian

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Sep 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781780374253

Finuala Dowling

Finuala Dowling established her literary career as a poet. Her first collection, I flying, won the Ingrid Jonker Prize, her second, Doo-Wop Girls of the Universe, was a co-winner of the Sanlam Prize, and her third, Notes from the Dementia Ward, won the Olive Schreiner Prize. Her previous novels are Flyleaf, Homemaking for the Down-at-Heart, which won the 2012 M-Net Literary Award for English Fiction, and The Fetch. In addition to novels and poetry, Dowling has published short stories in national and international anthologies, and has had plays and skits performed on stage and radio. Dowling is currently Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Extra-Mural Studies at UCT. She has a D.Litt from Unisa, where she taught English for several years. She has also taught English and creative writing at the University of Stellenbosch.

Book preview

FINUALA DOWLING

PRETEND YOU DON’T KNOW ME

New and Selected Poems

Pretend You Don’t Know Me brings together in one volume the best of Finuala Dowling’s funny, poignant and idiosyncratic poetry from four earlier prize-winning collections, with a section devoted to new poems. It introduces this popular South African poet to a UK audience.

Finuala Dowling’s debut collection, I flying, published in 2002, was an instant success in her native South Africa. Its accessibility, humanity and wit, as well as its beguilingly honest stories of home, parenthood, love, loss and desperation, won many new converts to poetry. Her subsequent collections, Doo-Wop Girls of the Universe and Notes from the Dementia Ward, consolidated her reputation as an inventive sketcher of the domestic sublime. Her chapbook, Change is possible, sold out at the 2014 Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.

Pretend You Don’t Know Me includes her iconic poem ‘To the doctor who treated the raped baby and who felt such despair’ as well as Dowling’s tragi-comic cycle of poems on the theme of her mother’s dementia, and her hugely popular poems ‘Butter’, ‘I am the Zebra’, ‘To adventurers, as far as I’m concerned’ and ‘The abuse of cauliflowers’. At the heart of the book are the funny and poignant connections we make with other people, and the lifelong effort to stay whole.

‘Dowling is redefining poetry, bringing her distinctive voice and wit to bear on a medium so often stuck in moody, broody times.’ – Arja Slafranca, The Star

‘A brave new voice in South African poetry, filled with vitality, wit, unexpected rhythms and fresh ideas.’ – Shirley Kossick, Mail&Guardian

Cover photograph by Jan-Schneckenhaus (iStock by Getty Images)

FINUALA DOWLING

Pretend You

Don’t Know Me

NEW AND SELECTED POEMS

CONTENTS

Title Page

fromI FLYING(2002)

Green house

I read the last page first

Repair

For Oom Piet

I flying

To the doctor who treated the raped baby and who felt such despair

Census man

I have been undemonstrative since birth

Nine kinds of silence

Teaching Margaret Atwood

Kitchen Table

The idea of you

Rule three thousand and ten

Fine in the Transkei

Blackjack

Under Anaesthetic

Happy New Year 2001

Found poem

fromDOO-WOP GIRLS OF THE UNIVERSE(2006)

Feeling marginalia

Talk, share and listen

Freelance writer’s lament

Last straw

The differences between Middle and Modern English

Well

Disappearing

Asylum

My sister’s fingers

Boys we kissed

The falling feeling

On the roof with Rory, 1976

Loving novels

Shops of my mother’s imagination

Your death

The lime-green clasp

Doo-wop girls of the universe

fromNOTES FROM THE DEMENTIA WARD(2008)

Your children, parents, siblings, spouses, pets, bêtes noires, acquaintances

At eight-five, my mother’s mind

Taking

Lastness

Shift aside

Be shared

Self-portrait from the dementia ward

Hearts of stone

Widowhood in the dementia ward

Butter

An initiative to increase the number of male readers

Brief fling in the dementia ward

Multilingualism in the dementia ward

Odd one out in the dementia ward

More advanced thinking in the dementia ward

Devolution in the dementia ward

Protection from grief in the dementia ward

Red rover

Birthday in the dementia ward

How I knew it wasn’t me

Homesickness

Riches

Bread roll pun

Thoughts on emigration

How to use a porcupine as an alibi

I am the zebra

Summarising life

fromCHANGE IS POSSIBLE(2014)

Micheál Mac Liammóir came to Cape Town in 1962

Ditty

Caveat

Wanting to get divorced #1365

How sweet the dead are now

I gossip with my sister about the future

On not liking oneself

The consolation of enmity

The quest

To adventurers, as far as I’m concerned

Mise-en-abyme

Cupboards

Authority

Composition

The abuse of cauliflowers

The lawmaker

fromNEW POEMS

Casting the cat and the bull

Unforgettable

Life lesson

To young women, urging them not to become competent

To my sisters, on selling the old family home

My therapist asks when it is that I cry

Dog produces Monet forgery

Catch of the day

Identity crisis 2016

Distant mirror

It’s only lunch

The problem with this game drawn out in chalk

My mother the crocodile-tamer

Party invitations

Why I love an insult

Unhappiness

Two bodies could not be less alike than ours

One in a million

When panicking, think of the recently dead

Doubt

Ilk

How a house feels when we leave

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

About the Author

Copyright

FROM

I flying

(2002)

Green house

I live