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Mortar
‘Regardless of how many times I have read these poems, they never cease to surprise me. Mortar is a remarkable collection attuned to the various structures – both jubilant and woeful – that order life. The poems place the abstract with the concrete, the cerebral with the physical, with invigorating, carefully-pegged precision: “The uncut grass of never asking knots and knots until severance is the only uncalled-for answer”. If these poems were glasses, I would wear them often, to see the world with more curiosity, immediacy, and intensity.’ – Lila Matsumoto
‘Unsworth has built a memorable collection in Mortar. We are thrown into a variation of tightly fisted prose poems which loosen into a confident dance of poetic forms. “My nothingness is manmade” – and indeed the poems make use of architecture and psychology to create a quiet, unnerving intimacy within a domestic space haunted by vivid images and memories. Through a forceful first-person voice, the book investigates the multiple layering of the self, the body, and their vulnerabilities’ – Kit Fan
‘In the essay “Slow Death”, Lauren Berlant considers that “agency can be an activity of maintenance, not making”, to withstand unequal infrastructures set up to dominate and corrode. Lydia Unsworth’s collection Mortar is about as radical a poetics of maintenance as I can think of. It tunes its attention to materials, structures, and forms of getting by as well as the incursions that make so frequently such a task: Bakelite, dangling sofas on cranes, baths falling through ceilings, moulding bicycle seats, bus shelter overhangs, shrink wrap, and sun tanned hands. Unsworth’s poems wrap and envelop, touch and lean, shelter and protect. I don’t ever want to leave the stunning language structures of this book which is just as well because the five mattresses by the door would make it quite a squeeze.’ – Colin Herd
‘The mortar of bodies, relationships (emotional and economic) and domestic spaces binds these extraordinary poems’ diverse materials into a pleasingly unsettling whole.’ – James Knight
‘Unsworth has built a memorable collection in Mortar. We are thrown into a variation of tightly fisted prose poems which loosen into a confident dance of poetic forms. “My nothingness is manmade” – and indeed the poems make use of architecture and psychology to create a quiet, unnerving intimacy within a domestic space haunted by vivid images and memories. Through a forceful first-person voice, the book investigates the multiple layering of the self, the body, and their vulnerabilities’ – Kit Fan
‘In the essay “Slow Death”, Lauren Berlant considers that “agency can be an activity of maintenance, not making”, to withstand unequal infrastructures set up to dominate and corrode. Lydia Unsworth’s collection Mortar is about as radical a poetics of maintenance as I can think of. It tunes its attention to materials, structures, and forms of getting by as well as the incursions that make so frequently such a task: Bakelite, dangling sofas on cranes, baths falling through ceilings, moulding bicycle seats, bus shelter overhangs, shrink wrap, and sun tanned hands. Unsworth’s poems wrap and envelop, touch and lean, shelter and protect. I don’t ever want to leave the stunning language structures of this book which is just as well because the five mattresses by the door would make it quite a squeeze.’ – Colin Herd
‘The mortar of bodies, relationships (emotional and economic) and domestic spaces binds these extraordinary poems’ diverse materials into a pleasingly unsettling whole.’ – James Knight
60 pages, Paperback
Published July 15, 2021
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August 1, 2021
I was very excited to be given a review copy of Unsworth's new collection, since I'm a fan of her work. Thanks to Osmosis Press for letting me read it!
From the start, this collection draws you into Unsworth's house - a contradictory place where it's both a place the writer wants to be and a 'chokehold'. The themes of home and the body were interwoven throughout this collection - with a sense of uncertainty and intimacy accompanying them.
The home is given human-like characteristics: 'The skin of the window ready to pop', and 'The new couch...like some distended organ.' While the body is also something uncertain and sometimes uncomfortable: 'A lung smacks against a lung' and 'There is always a mouth where you didn't expect a mouth to be.'
Aside from home, there was also a strong theme of a nature, especially nature in contrast with the urban. In Going to Seed for example, Unsworth says, 'like baby turtles that take to feet / under lamplight, too far from a sea / they will never now find.' This line portrays the sense of disorientation Unsworth appears to feel at all times - stuck between the enticement and power of nature and the artificial but oddly comforting constructed world of the city. It is something we all feel as humans - the disconnect with the natural world but also an affinity to our fabricated homes. Unsworth writes, 'I am the cobbles. Mortar. Mortar.' Throughout, I felt like her words were imprinting on me, as the world around us imprints on us.
As Unsworth plays with words, images, feelings and expectations, she summarises it perfectly when she says, 'nothing is at rest.' Every page of this is a new pathway, leading us somewhere totally unknown, a labyrinth of things we thought we knew but in the end, we find ourselves seeing them in a new light or finding something different underneath.
I recommend checking this out for yourself.
From the start, this collection draws you into Unsworth's house - a contradictory place where it's both a place the writer wants to be and a 'chokehold'. The themes of home and the body were interwoven throughout this collection - with a sense of uncertainty and intimacy accompanying them.
The home is given human-like characteristics: 'The skin of the window ready to pop', and 'The new couch...like some distended organ.' While the body is also something uncertain and sometimes uncomfortable: 'A lung smacks against a lung' and 'There is always a mouth where you didn't expect a mouth to be.'
Aside from home, there was also a strong theme of a nature, especially nature in contrast with the urban. In Going to Seed for example, Unsworth says, 'like baby turtles that take to feet / under lamplight, too far from a sea / they will never now find.' This line portrays the sense of disorientation Unsworth appears to feel at all times - stuck between the enticement and power of nature and the artificial but oddly comforting constructed world of the city. It is something we all feel as humans - the disconnect with the natural world but also an affinity to our fabricated homes. Unsworth writes, 'I am the cobbles. Mortar. Mortar.' Throughout, I felt like her words were imprinting on me, as the world around us imprints on us.
As Unsworth plays with words, images, feelings and expectations, she summarises it perfectly when she says, 'nothing is at rest.' Every page of this is a new pathway, leading us somewhere totally unknown, a labyrinth of things we thought we knew but in the end, we find ourselves seeing them in a new light or finding something different underneath.
I recommend checking this out for yourself.
Displaying 1 of 1 review