Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
'Helen Ivory creates a troubled yet beguiling world rich in irony and disquiet. She possesses a strongly-grounded narrative voice which, combined with her dextrous transformative takes both on reality and on what lies beyond reality's surface, puts one in mind of the darker side of Stevie Smith who said that poetry "is a strong explosion in the sky". "The Breakfast Machine" is such an explosion in the sky of contemporary poetry.' --- Penelope Shuttle.
'Ivory's language, seemingly innocuous, sometimes almost deadpan, is in fact highly and instinctively wrought to contain the elusive resonance of her subject-matter…myth, madness, dislocation of self, shifting intent of narrator and her quixotic elemental world…They capture the imagination at full strength. Prepare, therefore, to be disturbed.' --- Sarah Law, Stride
'Finally for something completely different. The Dog in the Sky twitches the dark…lighthearted personae play against a cosmic shiver. Any surrealism relies on a certain passionate madness.' --- Judith Kazantzis, Poetry Review
'Ivory's language, seemingly innocuous, sometimes almost deadpan, is in fact highly and instinctively wrought to contain the elusive resonance of her subject-matter…myth, madness, dislocation of self, shifting intent of narrator and her quixotic elemental world…They capture the imagination at full strength. Prepare, therefore, to be disturbed.' --- Sarah Law, Stride
'Finally for something completely different. The Dog in the Sky twitches the dark…lighthearted personae play against a cosmic shiver. Any surrealism relies on a certain passionate madness.' --- Judith Kazantzis, Poetry Review
Product Description
Inside "The Breakfast Machine" a chicken on squeaky tin legs is cooking you eggs and a squirrel plays tape-recorded birdsong high up in a tree. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse high-tail it into town as cowboys, and the fate of the world is decided by a game of cards. "The Breakfast Machine" is driven by the transformations of fairytale where the dark corners of childhood are explored and found to be alive and well in offices, kitchens and hen-houses. There is more than a hint of East European darkness in Helen Ivory's third collection, which sits more comfortably alongside the animations of Jan Svankmajer than any English poetic tradition.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The blurb to this collection talks about an Eastern European darkness to the poetry, and there's certainly a disturbing, nightmarish feel to many of the pieces here, with all sorts of oddness lurking behind the mundane and everyday. That's satisfying enough in itself, but one of the great pleasures, for the reader, is in trying to work out how Helen Ivory consistently achieves that effect with what, on the face of it, is plain, unadorned language. I'm still not exactly sure, to be honest, but the quietness of her voice, and her precise control of rhythm through an unerring instinct for the right line-break, are certainly something to do with it. Highly individual, and highly recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Helen Ivory's poems are assured and highly original. I bought this book to enjoy on my summer holiday and it kept me both entertained and intrigued. 'Talk soft to me' is the first line of the last poem, and she does indeed 'talk soft', in a beguiling bedtime story way, as well as seductively whispering in our ears of the strange things that come into her fertile mind. This book is poetic magical realism at its best. It deserves its place on my poetry shelves.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
There are two things that attracted me to Helen Ivory's collection, The Breakfast Machine. The first is the beautiful and intriguing cover, a perfect complement to her surname, Ivory. The second is the comment in the blurb that her poems are `driven by the transformations of fairytale where the dark corners of childhood are explored...' As I am interested in fairytales and myths for my own poetry writing, I was keen to learn from an expert.
The drama and mystery of the first poem, The End of the Pier Show set the scene for the whole collection. It transports us to the extraordinary world of a magician and his company of tigers, flames and shadows. It is exciting but scary and the tension of the final stanza is palpable - `music is ripped from the throats/ of a million songbirds/ bled in the fusty air of the theatre...' In the last two lines, we are confronted with a little girl who stands up and puts down her doll, and we are left wondering what to make of this show.
I am hard pressed to choose a favourite from this collection. I enjoyed them all. My reading proved to be more than a journey into fairytale, rather an adventure into a quirky universe, full of surprise and illusion - prompting me to question the nature of my own reality. I loved meeting cowboys with itchy fingers, the woman selling mouldy oranges who waits for rain with outstretched hands and the mannequins in the basement singing in one voice.
Helen Ivory brings her characters to life (or death) using specific and witty narrative in a landscape of strange and startling twists. I easily imagined myself in Prague's Kafka Café - with `walls made of smoke/ ceiling not there' and in the `city the colour of amber' where `firemen scale the impossible walls/ to rescue rats and spiders'.
She contains her poems in well-ordered stanzas so they look neat and appealing on the page. It is the originality of her subjects and imagery that creates the power in her poems freeing her of the need for rhymes and other poetic techniques.
This collection touched something `deep' inside me, which made me feel curious and alive as I connected with bizarre traditions (piers, sideshows, magicians, slot machines etc) and our great storytelling culture. I'm sure I will be returning to this collection again.
The drama and mystery of the first poem, The End of the Pier Show set the scene for the whole collection. It transports us to the extraordinary world of a magician and his company of tigers, flames and shadows. It is exciting but scary and the tension of the final stanza is palpable - `music is ripped from the throats/ of a million songbirds/ bled in the fusty air of the theatre...' In the last two lines, we are confronted with a little girl who stands up and puts down her doll, and we are left wondering what to make of this show.
I am hard pressed to choose a favourite from this collection. I enjoyed them all. My reading proved to be more than a journey into fairytale, rather an adventure into a quirky universe, full of surprise and illusion - prompting me to question the nature of my own reality. I loved meeting cowboys with itchy fingers, the woman selling mouldy oranges who waits for rain with outstretched hands and the mannequins in the basement singing in one voice.
Helen Ivory brings her characters to life (or death) using specific and witty narrative in a landscape of strange and startling twists. I easily imagined myself in Prague's Kafka Café - with `walls made of smoke/ ceiling not there' and in the `city the colour of amber' where `firemen scale the impossible walls/ to rescue rats and spiders'.
She contains her poems in well-ordered stanzas so they look neat and appealing on the page. It is the originality of her subjects and imagery that creates the power in her poems freeing her of the need for rhymes and other poetic techniques.
This collection touched something `deep' inside me, which made me feel curious and alive as I connected with bizarre traditions (piers, sideshows, magicians, slot machines etc) and our great storytelling culture. I'm sure I will be returning to this collection again.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
