Dear Boy

Description

"Dear Boy" is the dramatic and inventive debut by Emily Berry. These characterful, intelligent and darkly witty poems explore lives lived strangely in unusual worlds, through a series of deft and seductive soliloquies. In a collection with a taste for ventriloquy and wickedness, and a flair for vocal cross-dressing, the balance of power is always shifting in an unexpected direction - an ingenue masquerades as a femme fatale, a doctor appears more disturbed than his patient, and parents seem more unruly than their children. Eccentric, intimate, arch, anxious, decadent and sometimes mournful, the book's confiding, conversational voices tell stories recognisable and refracted, carried along by the undercurrent on which the collection ebbs and rides: the anguish and energy brought about by a long-distance love affair, which propels and terrorises and ultimately unites the work. "Dear Boy" is an irresistible and enlivening collection by a new poet of startling and various gifts.

Author description

Emily Berry grew up in London and studied English Literature at Leeds University, and Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College. In 2008 she won an Eric Gregory Award. She is a co-editor of the anthology series Stop/Sharpening/Your/Knives and a contributor to The Breakfast Bible, a compendium of breakfasts to be published by Bloomsbury. She works as a freelance writer and editor.