Honorifics

By Cynthia Miller

Cynthia Miller's debut poetry collection, Honorifics, is an astonishing, adventurous, and innovative exploration of family, Malaysian-Chinese cultural identity, and immigration. From jellyfish blooms to glitch art and distant stars, taking in Greek gods, space shuttles and wedding china along the way, Miller's mesmerizing approach is experimental, luscious, and expansive with longing - "My skin hunger could fill a galaxy".
Here, the poetry is interwoven with the words for all the things we honour – our loved ones and our ancestors, home and homecomings, and all that is precious and makes us feel that we belong and are beloved. It is also a book that examines contemporary issues of migration in sharp and enquiring relief. Language itself becomes a radical power for reimaging, challenging, and making change, and Miller's distinctive and multifaceted poetry creates an extraordinary space for multiplicity and celebration.
'This is language and detail, honed and luxurious. This is space and memory and migratory patterns and fable. An array of formal play and innovation. And everything finely weighted like a gift-box of intricate, interlocking mechanisms.' – Jacob Sam-La Rose
'Honorifics is a dazzlingly inventive collection that circles around themes of love and yearning, family history and migration, with a sophisticated touch. Formally playful, these poems are alive with imagery and a restless intelligence'– Jane Yeh

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Jun 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781913437169

Cynthia Miller

Cynthia Miller is a Malaysian-American poet, festival producer and innovation consultant living in Edinburgh. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ambit, The Rialto, Butcher's Dog, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, harana poetry, The Best New British and Irish Poets and Primers Volume Two. She is also Co-Founder of the Verve Poetry Festival.

Book preview

Sayang / Sayang

Portmeirion

"[English] has no grammar to describe something which

has already happened for you and which will be for me."

    – Carlo Rovelli

1.

Physicists debate

    whether when we

remember something

    we access

that original memory

    or a shortcut in the brain.

There is debate, too,

    amongst scientists

over whether too many

    shortcuts might,

over time, disintegrate

    the source memory.

The way English teachers

    year after year

kept photocopying

    the photocopies

until the original text

    faded completely.

The way oil

    from fingertips

can destroy

    a precious document

over time

    if handled too often.

The way I keep

    memories in

a temperature-controlled

    vault and hide the key

at the back of the

    cupboard of my mind.

NASA recently photographed

    a far-off star

orbiting a far-off

    planet, light years

from us, already winked

    out of our future.

2.

Last Christmas

    my mother gave me

a Portmeirion cup,

    last one from her beloved

wedding set, a wreath of

    dark leaves on its lip.

She had wrapped it

    in soft cotton t-shirts

and blue bubble wrap,

    gently tucked it in her

carry-on, a small bird

    travelling miles to reach me.

One day I saw a similar set

    in a charity shop,

dinner plate bloom of

    forget-me-nots and

heartsease, and felt a black hole

    yawn open inside me.

Though it has yet to come,

    it’s coming.

Though it has yet to happen,

    it’s happening.

This is the only way to explain

    how afraid I am of my mother dying:

My fear is a collapsing star

    eating all light.

The cup is still in the

    cupboard, untouched.

3.

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4.

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5.

The first circle

is a litany of laurel leaves around the edge.

The second circle

is the one I pace into the ground.

The third circle

is a dropped headlamp, looping small moons.

My body takes on sadness the way lily pollen stains