Honorifics
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About this ebook
Here, the poetry is interwoven with the words for all the things we honour – our loved ones and our ancestors, home and homecomings, and all that is precious and makes us feel that we belong and are beloved. It is also a book that examines contemporary issues of migration in sharp and enquiring relief. Language itself becomes a radical power for reimaging, challenging, and making change, and Miller's distinctive and multifaceted poetry creates an extraordinary space for multiplicity and celebration.
'This is language and detail, honed and luxurious. This is space and memory and migratory patterns and fable. An array of formal play and innovation. And everything finely weighted like a gift-box of intricate, interlocking mechanisms.' – Jacob Sam-La Rose
'Honorifics is a dazzlingly inventive collection that circles around themes of love and yearning, family history and migration, with a sophisticated touch. Formally playful, these poems are alive with imagery and a restless intelligence'– Jane Yeh
Cynthia Miller
Cynthia Miller is a Malaysian-American poet, festival producer and innovation consultant living in Edinburgh. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ambit, The Rialto, Butcher's Dog, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, harana poetry, The Best New British and Irish Poets and Primers Volume Two. She is also Co-Founder of the Verve Poetry Festival.
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Book preview
Honorifics - Cynthia Miller
Sayang / Sayang
Portmeirion
"[English] has no grammar to describe something which
has already happened for you and which will be for me."
– Carlo Rovelli
1.
Physicists debate
whether when we
remember something
we access
that original memory
or a shortcut in the brain.
There is debate, too,
amongst scientists
over whether too many
shortcuts might,
over time, disintegrate
the source memory.
The way English teachers
year after year
kept photocopying
the photocopies
until the original text
faded completely.
The way oil
from fingertips
can destroy
a precious document
over time
if handled too often.
The way I keep
memories in
a temperature-controlled
vault and hide the key
at the back of the
cupboard of my mind.
NASA recently photographed
a far-off star
orbiting a far-off
planet, light years
from us, already winked
out of our future.
2.
Last Christmas
my mother gave me
a Portmeirion cup,
last one from her beloved
wedding set, a wreath of
dark leaves on its lip.
She had wrapped it
in soft cotton t-shirts
and blue bubble wrap,
gently tucked it in her
carry-on, a small bird
travelling miles to reach me.
One day I saw a similar set
in a charity shop,
dinner plate bloom of
forget-me-nots and
heartsease, and felt a black hole
yawn open inside me.
Though it has yet to come,
it’s coming.
Though it has yet to happen,
it’s happening.
This is the only way to explain
how afraid I am of my mother dying:
My fear is a collapsing star
eating all light.
The cup is still in the
cupboard, untouched.
3.
img3.png4.
img4.png5.
The first circle
is a litany of laurel leaves around the edge.
The second circle
is the one I pace into the ground.
The third circle
is a dropped headlamp, looping small moons.
My body takes on sadness the way lily pollen stains