Bloodshot Monochrome [Paperback]

"* 'Praise for Transformatrix: A rising star.' - Observer * 'Thrilling. Has a multi-dimensional richness. It's a bold, brassy work.' - Independent on Sunday * 'Draws on rap, jive and disco rhythms as much as the formal subtleties of free verse. Agbabi is a fine poet, and her linguistic wit carries satirical fire.' - Daily Telegraph * 'Combines cutting satire and outright celebration.' - Big Issue"

Praise for Transformatrix: A rising star.

she takes the sonnet, chats it up, tattoos it, gives it some motherly advice then sends it away again.

combines the mastery of the tools of her poetic trade with contemporary and very personal themes

bubbles with her love of words, music and stroppy characters

Thrumming with energy and verve, she brings the stage to the page in her tight rhythms and adherence to rhyme

charged with passion, wit and sheer inventiveness

This collection is a glorious snapshot of twenty-first-century Britain. Playing with the ultimate poetic form, the sonnet, Agbabi twists and reinvents it, approaching subjects ranging from love to sex, family to race and from writing to film noir. Following is an extract from the book: I was twelve, as in the twelve-bar blues, sick, for the Southeast, marooned on the North Wales coast, A crotchet, my tongue craving the music/of Welsh, Scouse or Manc. Entering the outpost, of Colwyn Bay pier, midsummer, noon, nightclub for those of us with the deep ache/of adolescence, when I heard that tune, named it in one. Soul. My heart was break, dancing on the road to Wigan Casino, northern soul mecca where transatlantic bass, beat blacker than blue in glittering mono. Then back, via Southport, Rhyl, to the time, place, I bit the Big Apple. Black, impatient, young. A string of pips exploding on my tongue.

Patience Agbabi was born in London in 1965 to Nigerian parents, but grew up in rural Wales with white foster parents. Featured on Channel 4 and renowned on the performance circuit, her debut collection R.A.W. won the 1997 Excelle Literary Award for poetry, and Transformatrix was highly critically acclaimed on publication in 2000. Her poems have appeared on radio and television all over the world.

North(west)ern

I was twelve, as in the twelve-bar blues, sick
for the Southeast, marooned on the North Wales coast.
A crotchet, my tongue craving the music
of Welsh, Scouse or Mancs. Entering the outpost
of Colwyn Bay pier, midsummer, noon,
nightclub for those of us with the deep ache
of adolescence, when I heard that tune,
named it in one. Soul. My heart was break

dancing on the road to Wigan Casino,
northern soul mecca where transatlantic bass
beat blacker than blue in glittering mono.

Then back, via Southport, Rhyl, to the time, place,
I bit the Big Apple. Black, impatient, young.
A string of pips exploding on my tongue.