The Dead Queen of Bohemia

New & Collected Poems

Jenni Fagan

• Publisher: Birlinn
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780857908988
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

A collection of poetry from "the patron saint of literary street urchins" ( The New York Times ). The Dead Queen of Bohemia is a journey through a life lived on the edge. With a poetic style influenced by Gertrude Stein and William Burroughs, this collection is woven with surrealistic imagery that is both unflinching and dislocating. Jenni Fagan's poetry is raw and tough yet beautiful and tender, and with themes of loss and recovery, hope and defiance, represents a clarion call from a self-taught poet who started writing at the age of seven and so far has not stopped. "Full of desire and guitars and witches" ( Sunday Herald ), The Dead Queen of Bohemia documents the progression of a voice and a life written over the last twenty years, opening with Fagan's most recent work and including her previous two collections.

Collection I
New Poems

I Wanna Be Your Dog

My son and I

have a dog called Hank

who

one of us

wanted to call Fluffy

but the other

refused to spend ten years in parks

shouting

Fluffy!

unless —

the dog was a Rottweiler,

or a Pit bull.

Hank is just an imprint

of light

in our idle conversations.

Sometimes we see a dog

in the street

and I ask him,

is that what Hank looks like?

It never is

and we like him just like this,

our endless Hank,

a piston on the beach,

jaws snapping at one wave after another

or laid out under my feet

while I read poetry

to strangers

who are no stranger than I —

except for that one

up the back,

and also the woman I meet in the loos

who sings me a song;

then tells me

her dog

overdosed on paint fumes,

and the stain (where he laid tripping

in his last hours)

is still on her carpet.

I don’t ask her why

she let her dog get high on paint fumes.

Or, why she didn’t open a window.

She tells me about a cult;

she’s trying to escape

but they keep peering through her letter box,

shouting

we know

you’re in there!

She says she didn’t realise they were a cult

thought they were just friendly people,

and she was lonely

and had nobody to talk to about Jesus,

or her dead dog

who asphyxiated

watched over by floral vases,

while saints

wept

the

hours

away.

She was walking home from Norwich market

when she finally realised,

by then she’d given them her money

and dignity,

she’d been lured

and indoctrinated

she said she had to leave

the country

immediately

— to avoid further brainwashing.

I didn’t let her know the brainwashers

have Fiddle-Dee and Fiddle-Dum

in every port and customs

to make sure

those with clear sight

don’t get through

unseen.

She wasn’t really

listening to me read poetry

and we were not in an echoey

toilet with a dripping

cistern . . .

We were on the phone

for the seventeenth time,

because we were trying to swap flats

or I was trying to swap flats

and she was trying to make friends.

She asked if my housing association

would mind

if she had

— seven parrots

— two cats

— a rat

— a budgie

and maybe (if she got over her heartbreak)

another dog.

I said no,

I was sure that would be fine

because I would have said anything — at that point

to get

out

of

Edinburgh.

In the end I didn’t swap houses with crazy-cult-lady

and she’s probably still in the cult

calling strangers,

telling them about her dead dog

even to this day.

I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Collection I: New Poems
• Collection II: The Dead Queen of Bohemia (first published in 2010)
• Collection III: Urchin Belle (first published in 2009)
• Epilogue
• Acknowledgements
• The Author
• Note on the Type