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“Devastating and lyrical.” —The New York Times
“Suspenseful and affecting.” —The New Yorker
From the celebrated poet behind bone, a collection of poems that tells a story of coming-of-age, uncovering the cruelty and beauty of the world, going under, and finding redemption
Through her signature sharp, searing poems, this is the story of Yrsa Daley-Ward and all the things that happened. “Even the terrible things. And God, there were terrible things.” It’s about her childhood in the northwest of England with her beautiful, careworn mother Marcia; the man formerly known as Dad (half fun, half frightening); and her little brother Roo, who sees things written in the stars.
It’s also about the surreal magic of adolescence, about growing up and discovering the power and fear of sexuality, about pitch-gray days of pills and powder and connection. It’s about damage and pain, but also joy. With raw intensity and shocking honesty, The Terrible is a collection of poems that tells the story of what it means to lose yourself and find your voice.
“You may not run away from the thing that you are
because it comes and comes and comes as sure as you breathe.”
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
June 5, 2018 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780525504535
- File size: 836 KB
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780525504535
- File size: 836 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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February 15, 2018
Born in England of West Indian and West African heritage, actress/model-turned-poet Daley-Ward had a big hit with bone, self-published in 2014 and given a trade-house publication in 2017 that won strong reviews. This memoir addresses painful questions of race, religion, and sexual experience in a mix of poetry and prose.
Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
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Starred review from April 15, 2018
A powerful, unconventionally structured memoir recounting harrowing coming-of-age ordeals.Though she earned acclaim for her debut poetry collection, bone (2014), Daley-Ward resists classification in this profound mix of poetry and prose. Her Jamaican mother was sent to live in England during her first, teenage pregnancy. Her father, whom she never met, was Nigerian, married to someone else. The author was raised entirely in England, largely by her maternal grandparents, Seventh-Day Adventists. She discovered her poetic calling on a pilgrimage to Africa, after drugs and depression had left her at the end of her rope. Before then, she had worked as a model and aspired to be a singer, though her most lucrative source of income was sex work. The one main constant in her life has been her younger brother, Roo, who attempted suicide after their mother's death. Roo had a different father than his sister, who had a different father than their older brother. Their mother subsequently had a series of boyfriends, some of whom played quasi-dad to the offspring none of them had fathered. "I think about these parents of ours / our makers / our stars. (Such impossible, complex stars.)," she writes. "How they came, exploded, / and fell away." Daley-Ward had developed well before her teens, both physically and mentally, so much that her mother feared her then-boyfriend would have sexual designs on her and sent her to her strict grandparents. She soon became aware of the attention her looks brought her, and she exercised her power to attract men and feared the power they might have over her. She abused alcohol and drugs, both to feel something and not to feel anything, and she found older men willing to support her. Then she got engaged to a man who truly loved her but whom she sensed she didn't deserve. "I don't think that I'll live a particularly long life," she writes. "It doesn't bother me. You gather speed when you're descending."The subtitle is apt: Daley-Ward has quite a ferociously moving story to tell.COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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