Dressing for the Afterlife

By Maria Taylor

Dressing for the Afterlife is a diamond-tough and tender second collection of poems from British Cypriot poet Maria Taylor, which explores love, life, and how we adapt to the passage of time. From the steely glamour of silent film-star goddesses to moonlit seasons and the ghosts of other possible, parallel lives, these poems shimmy and glimmer bittersweet with humour and brio, as Taylor conjures afresh a world where Joan Crawford feistily simmers and James Bond's modern incarnation is mistaken for an illicit lover.
Consistently crisp and vivid, these poems examine motherhood, heritage and inheritance, finding stories woven in girlhood's faltering dance-steps, the thrum of the sewing-machine at the end-days of the rag trade, or the fizz and bubble of a chip-shop fryer. And throughout, breaking through, is the sense of women finding their wings and taking flight - "and her wings, what wings she has" - as Taylor's own poems soar and defiantly choose their own adventures.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Aug 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781913437022

Maria Taylor

Maria Taylor is a British Cypriot poet, critic and reviewer who has been published in The Rialto, Magma and The TLS, among other publications. Her debut collection of poetry, Melanchrini, was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, and her poetry featured in the Penguin anthology The Poetry of Sex, edited by Sophie Hannah. She has a pamphlet, Instructions for Making Me (HappenStance, 2016). She is also a keen runner and walker and lives in Leicestershire.

Book preview

Prologue

To dress for the afterlife,

step into the precise moment

you ended a former existence

and zipped yourself into the unknown.

Choose a wedding outfit,

a pair of overalls, an invisibility cloak,

or the national dress of a country

you have never visited before.

This is how you must learn

to breathe again.

She Ran

I took up running when I turned forty.

I opened my front door and started running

down a filthy jitty and past my parents’ flat.

I ran through every town in which I’d ever lived.

I ran past all my exes, even a few crushes

who sipped mochas and wore dark glasses.

I ran in a wedding dress through scattered confetti

and was cheered by the cast of Star Wars.

I ran through the screaming wind, rain and cloud.

I ran through my mother’s village and flew past

armed soldiers at the checkpoint. I ran past

my grandparents and Bappou’s mangy goats

with their mad eyes and scaled yellow teeth.

I ran straight through Oxford and Cambridge,

didn’t stop. I saw a naked man in Piccadilly Gardens.

I ran through high school and behind the gym

where gothy teens smoked and necked each other.

I passed an anxious mother pushing a pram

and a baby that kept throwing out her doll.

Seasons changed; summer turned into autumn,

I couldn’t get as far as I wanted.

The lights changed. My ribs, my flaming heart

and my tired, tired body burned.

I Began the Twenty-Twenties as a Silent Film Goddess

On the first of January I threw away my Smartphone

and wrote a letter to my beau in swirling ink.

I bobbed my hair, wore a cloche hat and shimmied

right into town for Juleps. I became Clara.

I became Louise. When I became a vamp, the boys

fell dead at my feet, I threw petals over their heads.

I dined on prosperity sandwiches and sidecars,

leaving restaurants with a sugar-rimmed mouth.

In summer I was a night-blooming flower.

By autumn I was a hangover. Winter made me

a Wall-Street Crash. Talking pictures were my ruin.

At last I had a voice but no-one wanted to hear.

Forgotten sisters. Oh Vilma, oh