Pelt

by Sarah Jackson

Sarah Jackson explores the edges of writing in this uncanny book of touch. Tender, haunting, and yet beautifully poised, the poems in Pelt get right under your skin. The collection takes you on an unsettling journey between infancy and adulthood. Slipping from birds to blindness, from hides to hiding, Pelt uncovers the unfamiliar in the everyday.

Pelt is written in the dark. It asks to be read through your fingertips. Striking and elegant, subtle and yet full of desire, this is a brilliant debut.

‘Sarah Jackson’s poems are dark, strange stories, immaculately crafted. Surprising, dextrous, sometimes shocking, they compel the reader into uncertain territory. This is an assured first collection from a cool and original new voice’ – Polly Clark

‘These poems have a dream-like, hallucinatory quality. Intriguing and mysterious, they transform childhood memory, myth, experiences of place, everything Sarah Jackson draws on for material, into surreal and vivid narratives’ – Vicki Feaver

‘Sarah Jackson’s Pelt is out on its own. At once peirastic and assured, these are poems of disturbing grace and power. The title-word is already disorientating: a sense of speed and assault goes with the skin and fur of what is, perhaps, not or no longer or no longer only human. Jackson’s poems have a compelling strangeness, uncomfortably intimate and elusive at the same time. You are not sure what distance to occupy in relation to them. It is a poetry of glints and disclosures, by turns gentle and menacing, diurnal and surreal, erotic and deranged. In radical and original fashion, Pelt prompts feelings “we can neither know / nor name”. Here is a new voice, a pelting of voices in English poetry’ – Nicholas Royle

Genres: Poetry

69 pages, Paperback

First published May 24, 2012

Reviews

[Helen Victoria Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unsettling and Visceral, I was struck when reading the notes in the afterword, how referential this collection was. This combination of natural (and chemical) oozing embodiment with a more reasoned literariness greatly appealed to me. Feeling and thinking unite together, like a sleepless night where you agonise over long memories and struggle to reason them through.

My favourites were "Wingspan", "Carrying my Bones", "Operation Dark Harvest" and "Remains".

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure what I think. These poems are 100% disturbing, creepy and magically eerie. I struggled to find meaning in a lot of them though I understood and liked the structure and choice of words, I just couldn't connect to most of the poems. Basically it's my fault I didn't love this collection and if you like magical realism poetry I'd totally give it a shot.

[scarlettraces · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wouldn't say this is "the edge of writing" but some of this was very nicely odd and "dark and strange" is right on the money. Lovely. Ms Jackson is definitely going on the purchase list.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dark, mysterious, but missed the mark for me. A very good first collection.

[Sienna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sarah Jackson is crouched inside a cardboard box. The body of her toddler self folds neatly into a toy-box among the boneless. She's in a dollhouse her father made, a doll in her mouth. Another Sarah looks wonderingly around at the padded surfaces of a dream-box, feeling their cushions with her eyes. Pelt is full of coverings, strange skins and enclosed spaces. It pulls crabs from their shells. It is cramped and expansive, bloody and cleansing, uncomfortable and comforting. It is the daughter of many parents: fishermen, figureheads, photographs, mothers with two bodies and minds. It is the wife and lover of winds so rough they'll strip you of words, of skin.

These poems are easy to read, but would be hard, so hard, I think, to live. Even in reading they rip you apart, gently, with precision, just a little. If they were in a bookstore, I'm not sure they would be filed under poetry, though no one would dispute that they are. But they are also science fiction and philosophy and children's stories, sometimes all at once, and they might move from shelf to shelf shifting each other, finding the right place, lovingly fingering the intentional tears in deckled pages. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they all take place inside a mouth. Pelt might warm you with safety, soothe you with refuge or trap you with freedom. Be careful when assuming it, or removing it.

The closing couplets of "Night Parliament" hint at Jackson's dangerous beauty:

Stirring porridge, my eyes are yoked
in their sockets and I long to swallow

my husband whole. My mouth is a beak.
Speaking is for covering up my thoughts

with sounds. In rain I take to hiding in barns
and in wind I am blown across fields.

Try visiting the "Cave of Ears":

Dripping with green
the moss ribs the rock walls
with jealous filaments.

On days like these,
when I lack moral fibre,
the best place for me

is the hole behind the waterfall.
Here, I hunker down,
recite auxiliary verbs

in a cave lobed with spores,
like a mouth filled with a thousand
ears, none of them listening.

Relish the flash of recognition in "Touch Papers":

It is white when I wake
so I wear my old navy dufflecoat,
finding them in my pocket
tucked inside a brown envelope

Here she is. Squatting,
she is the callus
on her size seven heel,
fingers tinsel-chipped

from schoolboard chalk,
driftwood nails, thumb
a pumicestone mouse
smiling my cheek.

Here he is. Flat out,
he is the lip of his ear,
swan soft, dust flecked,
the sound of a dog pawing.

He has grey whiskers that beat
like hair on coral
and his eyelid when he blinks
is deep, pooling, purple.

I hold them inside my pocket,
fondle skin letters
climbing the library steps.
They barely make a sound,

a rustle, a peep, as I slip
them between the pages
of a dictionary, under
Mother, Father.

Finally, "Carrying My Bones." This one seesaws and shatters.

I pitch on deck, where two men in Gortex talk about fixing
bicycles and one changes his T-shirt in the black wind.

We're heading to Kilcreggan tonight, only I think about
not going, about entering the water face-first instead.

You're waiting slantwise on the pier as I stumble,
dog-tired across the bridge. It's like walking over a body.

I can't keep my balance and there are oceans in my head.
You offer to take my bag but I'm carrying my own bones

in this suitcase of skin. I'm here to lock myself away
in water, although my mouth is a smile nailed in place.

You drive me to a cottage hung on the hill,
enough kindness to make my blisters weep,

but when you leave I grip the taps, twist them like wrists,
feel the cold rush of my house fill to its brim.

The sheep watch at the window as my face pushes the glass,
all bloated cheeks. Bleats leak from their stitched-up lips

as I double-knot my hair to the leg of the bed
and catch fish in my ribs.

(I can't recommend Jackson's too-brief debut collection highly enough. You can read three more poems on the Bloodaxe blog, including a personal favorite, "Vocal Chords.")

[Peter Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grand collection of her work.. from Monte Alcudina " The wind tears the tent from our fists as we pin it down with rocks and boots and horses, who hang around, noses dipping as if drilling for oil. We speak mostly in silence, words whipped from our mouths. "

[Erika · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my favorites list because Jackson's images are disturbing, haunting, and filled with tension. A wonderfully visceral and transgressive collection of poems.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful discovery! I loved these poems, thier dreamy evocations. Highly recommended for lovers of poets such as Anne Sexton and Slyvia Plath.