Carcanet Press - City of Departures

Description
Author
Awards
Reviews

Shortlisted for The 2019 Forward Prize for Best Collection

City of Departures is Helen Tookey’s second Carcanet collection, following her 2014 Missel-Child, an ‘exceptional volume... from a powerful and intelligent imagination’ (Jeffrey Wainwright). City of Departures is a collection of uncanny spaces and fleeting encounters, an urban patchwork of glimpsed moments and chance affiliations. Through them, Tookey explores the ways in which we create meaning and connection in these kinds of spaces, and how the nature of those connections - often temporary and provisional - affects who we are, and who we are becoming.

Tookey’s work has a new formal inventiveness and experimental temperament. The collection mixes prose and verse, and a multitude of voices and structures mingle on its pages. The poems connect through repeated images, themes and tones, which echo and re-echo. Their loci are neglected houses and gardens, canals, wrecked boats... liminal worlds where absence has a presence of its own, fertile ground for ghosts, fantasies, memories, and dreams.

Helen Tookey was born near Leicester in 1969 and now lives in Liverpool. She studied philosophy at university and subsequently worked in publishing. She currently teaches creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University. She has published two previous poetry collections with Carcanet Press, Missel-Chil d (2014, shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney ... read more

Awards won by Helen Tookey Short-listed, 2019 The Forward Prize for Best Collection (City of Departures) Short-listed, 2015 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection (Missel-Child)

'Narratives describing strange, sometimes dreamlike, episodes from a female protagonist's childhood dominate the second section of Helen Tookey's four-part collection of poems and prose poems, City of Departures ... The narrative is clear and secretive at the same time: it prompts questions.'

Carol Rumens from The Guardian where 'In the Rose Garden' was poem of the week on 3^rd Feb 2020

'For Helen Tookey, place becomes a series of intense encounters with the territories of European artists, in which their settings or personalities - and the poet's - mingle or erode... The book combines poems and prose in a compelling zone of stark atmospheres and richly observed interiors.'

W. N. Herbert, The Poetry Review

'The poems are finely crafted and closely observed, describing somewhat unsettling, dream-like landscapes and places of memory, deserted streets in European cities, or taking artworks and objects as inspiration and points of departure... [The] rejection of borders is a fitting ending to a collection that challenges formal and aesthetic boundaries, and engages with a range of European artistic influences to offer a vision of 'belonging as not-belonging' in the face of certain and chaotic political times.'

Sophie Baldock, The Manchester Review

'Reading this book can feel like sliding into that sunken world. Strange things float beneath its beautiful surfaces'
Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph
'The city in Tookey's City of Departures is full of the excitements of history and chance, and the chances taken to make a kind of radiant sense of the world, in all its breakings-down and might-have-beens, which is exactly what, time and again, these beautiful poems do.'
Jacob Polley
Praise for Helen Tookey 'Tookey is a deft poet, working with ekphrasis, the graphic qualities of text and lyrical prose to create ecopoetry that is unlike any other.'
Sarah Westcott, ARTEMISpoetry
'Formal variation - itself a kind of textual curiosity - is a source of innovation throughout the book, but it is the 'quiet'-seeming prose blocks that are especially good at holding bolts of unease in their narrative folds.'

Tiffany Atkison, The Poetry Review
'Continually enquiring and observing, Tookey's poetic voice is consistently tentative, aware of precariousnesss and the possibility of disintegration. She can see the world with a painter's eye... a haunting and compelling collection'

D. A. Prince, Orbis

'In the Quaker Hotel will change the way you perceive the world around you; this is ecopoetry with a psychologically effective perspective shift. Tookey liberates us from the boundaries of our humanness.'

Ellora Sutton, MsLexia

'There is an apocalyptic fear coursing through these poems, electrifying them with an often heart-breaking and urgent apprehension of ecological crisis. Through visiting and revisiting, Helen Tookey examines places with a sharp eye, both philosophical and painterly, asking us to attend to their vulnerabilities, their mystery. Behind these carefully made poems, Tookey gives us access to something infinite and disturbing. Delicate, eerie, anxious, prophetic and cinematic, In the Quaker Hotel is a haunting record of our times.'

Seán Hewitt, author of Tongues of Fire

'Missel-Child is an exceptional volume. Some of the subject-matter is found, some comes from a powerful and intelligent imagination and from keen observation. All is embodied in a language that is sensuous and strong.'
Jeffrey Wainwright 'The diction is unexpected, apt and deeply satisfying, focusing the reader not only on the words chosen, but also on the ghosts and resonances of those that might have been there.'
Carola Luther 'Her quiet, precise poems have a genuine eeriness. She has interests in both archaeology and psychology, but knows intuitively that they aren't separate -- that when we dig up the past it's our own roots we are looking at.'
Grevel Lindop

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City of Departures Helen Tookey 10% off eBook (EPUB) 10% off Paperback Categories: 21st Century, British, Women Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (88 pages) (Pub. Jul 2019) 9781784107598 £9.99 £8.99 eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE! (Pub. Jul 2019) 9781784107604 £7.99 £7.19 Digital access available through Exact Editions To use the EPUB version, you will need to have Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) installed on your device. You can find out more at https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html. Please do not purchase this version if you do not have and are not prepared to install, Adobe Digital Editions. Description Author Awards Reviews Shortlisted for The 2019 Forward Prize for Best Collection City of Departures is Helen Tookey’s second Carcanet collection, following her 2014 Missel-Child, an ‘exceptional volume... from a powerful and intelligent imagination’ (Jeffrey Wainwright). City of Departures is a collection of uncanny spaces and fleeting encounters, an urban patchwork of glimpsed moments and chance affiliations. Through them, Tookey explores the ways in which we create meaning and connection in these kinds of spaces, and how the nature of those connections - often temporary and provisional - affects who we are, and who we are becoming. Tookey’s work has a new formal inventiveness and experimental temperament. The collection mixes prose and verse, and a multitude of voices and structures mingle on its pages. The poems connect through repeated images, themes and tones, which echo and re-echo. Their loci are neglected houses and gardens, canals, wrecked boats... liminal worlds where absence has a presence of its own, fertile ground for ghosts, fantasies, memories, and dreams. Helen Tookey was born near Leicester in 1969 and now lives in Liverpool. She studied philosophy at university and subsequently worked in publishing. She currently teaches creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University. She has published two previous poetry collections with Carcanet Press, Missel-Chil d (2014, shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney ... read more Awards won by Helen Tookey Short-listed, 2019 The Forward Prize for Best Collection (City of Departures) Short-listed, 2015 Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize for First Full Collection (Missel-Child) 'Narratives describing strange, sometimes dreamlike, episodes from a female protagonist's childhood dominate the second section of Helen Tookey's four-part collection of poems and prose poems, City of Departures ... The narrative is clear and secretive at the same time: it prompts questions.' Carol Rumens from The Guardian where 'In the Rose Garden' was poem of the week on 3^rd Feb 2020 'For Helen Tookey, place becomes a series of intense encounters with the territories of European artists, in which their settings or personalities - and the poet's - mingle or erode... The book combines poems and prose in a compelling zone of stark atmospheres and richly observed interiors.' W. N. Herbert, The Poetry Review 'The poems are finely crafted and closely observed, describing somewhat unsettling, dream-like landscapes and places of memory, deserted streets in European cities, or taking artworks and objects as inspiration and points of departure... [The] rejection of borders is a fitting ending to a collection that challenges formal and aesthetic boundaries, and engages with a range of European artistic influences to offer a vision of 'belonging as not-belonging' in the face of certain and chaotic political times.' Sophie Baldock, The Manchester Review 'Reading this book can feel like sliding into that sunken world. Strange things float beneath its beautiful surfaces' Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph 'The city in Tookey's City of Departures is full of the excitements of history and chance, and the chances taken to make a kind of radiant sense of the world, in all its breakings-down and might-have-beens, which is exactly what, time and again, these beautiful poems do.' Jacob Polley Praise for Helen Tookey 'Tookey is a deft poet, working with ekphrasis, the graphic qualities of text and lyrical prose to create ecopoetry that is unlike any other.' Sarah Westcott, ARTEMISpoetry 'Formal variation - itself a kind of textual curiosity - is a source of innovation throughout the book, but it is the 'quiet'-seeming prose blocks that are especially good at holding bolts of unease in their narrative folds.' Tiffany Atkison, The Poetry Review 'Continually enquiring and observing, Tookey's poetic voice is consistently tentative, aware of precariousnesss and the possibility of disintegration. She can see the world with a painter's eye... a haunting and compelling collection' D. A. Prince, Orbis 'In the Quaker Hotel will change the way you perceive the world around you; this is ecopoetry with a psychologically effective perspective shift. Tookey liberates us from the boundaries of our humanness.' Ellora Sutton, MsLexia 'There is an apocalyptic fear coursing through these poems, electrifying them with an often heart-breaking and urgent apprehension of ecological crisis. Through visiting and revisiting, Helen Tookey examines places with a sharp eye, both philosophical and painterly, asking us to attend to their vulnerabilities, their mystery. Behind these carefully made poems, Tookey gives us access to something infinite and disturbing. Delicate, eerie, anxious, prophetic and cinematic, In the Quaker Hotel is a haunting record of our times.' Seán Hewitt, author of Tongues of Fire 'Missel-Child is an exceptional volume. Some of the subject-matter is found, some comes from a powerful and intelligent imagination and from keen observation. All is embodied in a language that is sensuous and strong.' Jeffrey Wainwright 'The diction is unexpected, apt and deeply satisfying, focusing the reader not only on the words chosen, but also on the ghosts and resonances of those that might have been there.' Carola Luther 'Her quiet, precise poems have a genuine eeriness. She has interests in both archaeology and psychology, but knows intuitively that they aren't separate -- that when we dig up the past it's our own roots we are looking at.' Grevel Lindop	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! 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