Winner of the 2010 Forward Prize for Best First Collection
Shortlisted for the London New Poetry Award 2010
In this first collection from Hilary Menos, icebergs floating down the
Thames jostle with transvestites in Singapore, aliens wading the Hudson
River and the lively crew from the local slaughterhouse. We go shopping
with Ingomar the barbarian and watch Bernard Manning gigging at Totnes
Civic Hall. Other poems are populated with characters from fiction: we
step off the cartoon cliff with the Road Runner, join Iggle Piggle in a
subverted Night Garden, and hitch a lift with the micro-crew on their
Fantastic Voyage.
Throughout, Menos brings a sophisticated sensibility to her poetry. Her
subjects are seen aslant, with ironic as well as tender intentions. She
ranges from the intimate and local to the ambitious and far flung, with
poems that capture 'elsewhere' set in Paris and Havana and New York, and
mini 'ecological' epics, often in the voice of an invented persona,
alongside poems about geese and babies and farming life in rural Devon.
"This is someone who reflects an expert at work but has their own vivid
way of seeing and acting."
Ruth Padel
"...crackles with formal skill, with extraordinary, vibrant language ...
and with great style ..."
Carol Ann Duffy
"She has the rare ability to uncover the wide range of implications of
the world we live in, be they emotional, spiritual or literary. Here is
a new poet with a full locker of accomplishments. She is sure to make an
immediate impact."
John Stammers
Hilary Menos was born in Luton in 1964, studied Philosophy, Politics
and Economics at Wadham College, Oxford, then worked as a food
journalist and restaurant critic in London before moving to Devon to
renovate a Domesday Manor. She now runs a 100 acre organic farm near
Totnes with her husband and four sons. She has won or been placed in
numerous competitions including the Mslexia Poetry Competition, BBC
Wildlife Magazine Poet of the Year, the Buxton Poetry Competition and
the Envoi Poetry Competition. She published a pamphlet, Extra Maths,
in 2004.
