1st Piece of Mail

So the first piece of mail I get at my new residence is poetry -how auspicious! I received a chapbook and a book of poetry from none other than Sophie Mayer, all the way from London.  You can visit her website (which is quirky and awesome) here. Her book, The Private Parts of Girls out by Salt Publishing, bringing you poetry and poetics since the times of Salt Magazine.

The book is gorgeous.  I insisted in reading it only while drinking coffee in Cambridge and I stuck to it.  Finished it this past weekend.  I like to describe it as follows: it's like my own chapbook got over her daddy issues, finally graduated college, had several lovers and moved to London.  In short this book is disorienting, teasing, mature and oceanic.  There is tons of water all around and inside of it.  Sophie is a mermaid on land and the language here is sonorous and ondine.  That's only half of it - the latter half.  As if the book pours into a deeper and more marine voice.  I love all the sound play in it, in a way in which only a Brit can achieve.  I read the book sometimes in an accent, and in her voice.  I was drinking coffee but kept stealing swigs off Derek Fenner's fizzy lemonade when I came across this:

And yet my favorite thing of all is reading the chapbook she sent me, which I keep by my bedside and read slowly, like the drip of a wet bathing suit on a hook.  It has this lovely bead detail on the spine which I adore and will undoubtedly try on something one of these days.  Thanks for so much loveliness, Sophie Mayer.