Singing My Mother's Song

by Rebecca Tantony

This collection started as a whisper, a quiet mouth asking questions. Over the years it became a coherent voice that kept getting louder. Now it is a song, sprung from a yearning to fill in the missing parts, to understand my mothers story. Perhaps its something that goes beyond what is experiential and real and moves into memory and imagination. Perhaps it is a book of magic, of synchronicity and colliding moments in time, too strange to be logical, too concise to be chance. Ultimately, its a way of shedding light, in order to change the direction of a past. Sometimes, I think it has been formed by my imagined daughter, clearing the way ahead before her own birth. Or by whole generations of women, celebrating a future, formed from the heart of us.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published May 1, 2019

About the author

I’m a writer specialising in themes of human nature, identity and the self. I have performed my work in numerous venues, including the Royal Albert Hall, the Natural History Museum, the Arnolfini, St George’s, The Watershed and Colston Hall, as well as a scattering of house parties and pub toilets. My short stories, journalism, and poetry have been published in various anthologies and magazines and my recent collection of flash non fiction, ‘Talk You Round Till Dusk,’ was published by Burning Eye Books in early 2015. In 2012 I was awarded the Rising Stars Performance Poetry Award and spoke at the annual Mix Conference on the theme of Digital Media and Poetry. In 2014 I was commissioned by Bristol Festival of Nature to write a new piece about climate change and humanity. When not performing I teach spoken word in multiple venues, including the Barbican Theatre and Royal Geographical Society. In San Francisco, I worked for the globally-recognised creative writing centre, 826 Valencia. Back home I was a poetry facilitator on Shake The Dust, the UK’s largest ever teen spoken word slam which appeared in schools throughout the country. Currently I run the Bristol branch of the prestigious Hammer and Tongue, manage The Wandering Word Workshop Tent and am Co-Director for the Applied Theatre Action Initiative, a California-based arts organisation that works with teenagers across the globe to create solution-focused social change. I also have an intense love of black coffee, the Deep South and possess some exceptional dance moves.

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This volume of poetry is a lovely adventure…one in which the whole of humanity is invited to share in a passionate love of language, the ancient humming of familial blood, and the music of history which brings us all together to appreciate the songs of the present.

[Ruth Fisher · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 ⭐