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    On Trust: A Book of Lies
    On Trust: A Book of Lies
    On Trust: A Book of Lies
    Ebook79 pages31 minutes

    On Trust: A Book of Lies

    By James Womack

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    About this ebook

    On Trust: A Book of Lies, James Womack's second collection of poems, is organised around the notion of telling the truth. Working against ideas of poetry as a vehicle for displaying individual truths or unprocessed confessions, these poems play hilariously, earnestly, undecidedly, with such simple identifications as the I' of a poem with the I' of the poet, offering us monologues which seem to be sincere, unvarnished accounts of things that have really' happened, but which twist and escape any absolute statements of identity. Serious questions of being and belonging, as well as frivolous themes such as the Marquis de Sade, Siberia, genitals, the Fates, and death, are picked up in play, prodded at, then put down in new and sparkling configurations.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCarcanet Press Ltd.
    Release dateDec 19, 2017
    ISBN9781784104177
    On Trust: A Book of Lies
    Author

    James Womack

    James Womack was born in 1979. He studied Russian, English and translation at university, and after living in Madrid for a decade now works as an editor, teacher and freelance translator in Cambridge. He has translated widely, including self-help books, popular fiction, Latin American classics and poetry. His first book of poems, Misprint, came out in 2012, and his book of versions ‘Vladimir Mayakovsky’ and Other Poems appeared in 2016, both from Carcanet.

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      Book preview

      On Trust - James Womack

      JAMES WOMACK

      ON TRUST

      A Book of Lies

      True?’ said the Colonel. ‘Of course my stories are true.

      They may not have happened in quite this way, or at quite

      this time, or even to quite these people. But they’re all true.’

      Cupid implies; Venus infers.

      Contents

      Title Page

      Author Biography

      ‘flew in on New Year’s Day the fireworks’

      Target

      That Kiss

      Co-respondent

      Such Affairs

      Seawife

      Brief Poems of Frustration

      Note to Self (I)

      To ****

      Aisling

      256 Poems of Love and Regret

      Hour-Glass Figure

      Dick Jokes

      Listen, Friday was Crazy

      ‘Do you remember a couple of poems back’

      ‘I said that it had been destroyed—’

      Going North

      Glass Half Dark

      Note to Self (II)

      Propositions

      Lethe

      The Naked Fates

      Untitled

      error

      ‘And then you ask’

      Note to Self (III)

      The Ambassadors

      ‘I kiss you once and say I love you twice’

      Oliver and Glass

      Foreshadowing

      All Summers…

      Note to Self (IV)

      ‘You in Switzerland, walking away from a divorce’

      Dust and Apples

      The Same Poem, Moving Backwards Through Time

      ‘My wife just broke her little toe’

      From Mayhew

      From a Brother

      Storm

      Prometheus

      After Rilke

      Caucasian Melodies

      Fireworks in Zakamensk

      Balance

      Beheading videos

      Things I Remember About Germany

      Oliver and the Bears

      Europe

      On Trust

      Notes

      Also by James Womack from Carcanet

      Copyright

      AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

      Oh none of this ever happened, but one feels so grown-up

      composing a self out of details not entirely meritworthy.

      ‘FLEW IN ON NEW YEAR’S DAY THE FIREWORKS’

      flew in on New Year’s Day the fireworks

      beneath my plane like sudden lichen

      my wife uses a caviar jar for an ashtray

      wants her tombstone to read

      FINALLY JUSTICE

      one neighbour is losing her mind the doorbell

      often rings as she goes to look for herself

      taking my arm in her hand and angry

      asking again and again why do you live here

      TARGET

      I’d like to be a queen of people’s hearts…

      Bored at ourselves, we filled bottles both glass and plastic with the undrinkable tap water.

      We opened the large window and took a five paces run-up.

      The bottles all burst. Some burst subtly, a disappointing collapse and split.

      Others burst beautifully in a corona of shrapnel round a surprisingly dry centre.

      This was the fourteenth floor, the fag-end of August, years and years ago.

      The supervisor was alerted by the crashing the cheers the who-knows-what.

      He came to our door smoking a cigarette.

      Listen, you little cunts, if you throw more shit out of the window you’re for it.

      What, us? We

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