Quiet

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Finally, there’s a question here about who gets to decide what kind of quiet is good quiet? Who gets to decide that standard? Who gets to say, “This is the pitch at which our public conversation will take place, or our private conversation will take place or our private conversation will take place?”

Shaffi, Sarah (13 October 2022). "TS Eliot prize announces a 'shapeshifting' shortlist". The Guardian . Retrieved 6 February 2023. A second-person speaker allows the poet to hold an insecure adolescent self with clear-eyed tenderness:

A] standout debut ... This is an exploration of race, empire, friendship, nature and community written with an assured combination of critical originality and formal skill that is rare in first collections." - Irish Times The judges described Scary Monsters as a “work of beautifully composed genius”. “This is a book that troubles and disquiets, dazzles and delights, and with lively wit and intelligence, will also make you laugh darkly,” the judges added. Anthony Cummins in the Guardian described the book as “slyly intelligent”. Constructing a Nervous System won the nonfiction category, while the fiction award was won by Michelle de Kretser for Scary Monsters. The poetry prize was taken by Victoria Adukwei Bulley for her debut collection Quiet. Bulley is of Ghanaian heritage, born and brought up in Essex, England. In 2019 she was awarded a Techne [2] scholarship for doctoral work at Royal Holloway, University of London. [1] Writing [ edit ]

El Socorro’ comes from the autobiographical collection Sonnets for Albert , Anthony Joseph’s fifth poetry collection. It follows Desafinado , Teragaton , Bird Head Son , and Rubber Orchestras . Beyond poetry Joseph has also written three novels, including the multi-award shortlisted Kitch: A Fictional Biography of a Calypso Icon . Victoria Adukwei Bulley is allowing tension to be present and she isn’t resolving it. She is saying, “these are 31 ways that you can examine the experience about what quiet might mean other than just quiet.” And she’s saying, “maybe all of these 31 ways are existing all the time and more. And therefore, let’s use the doorway of a poem to open up imagination about how to explore quiet when it is that next we come across it in our personal life, in our community life, home life, public life, in political life. All of these ways where the word “quiet” might be used as if it can mean only one thing.” And she’s saying, “Look, it probably means many more. And 31 is only just a start.” Victoria Adukwei Bulley is a writer and film-maker of Ghanaian heritage, born and raised in Essex, England, and an alumna of the thriving artistic development project Barbican Young Poets. Published this month, her first full-length collection, Quiet, moves between anger and tenderness, scientific curiosity and raw grief, full-on noisiness and meditative quiet. Quiet moves between anger and tenderness, scientific curiosity and raw grief, full-on noisiness and meditative quiet. [Bulley’s]spirited and generous work is not always quiet: there are overtly political poems, poems in experimental forms, and a number of spectacularly powerful prose poems, including a long and dazzling riff on ‘noise.’ Buy the collection.” —Carol Rumens, “Poem of the Week,” The Guardian Bulley here focuses on sound. Rhythm. Through the noise, diagetic and non-diagetic, she explores the vacuum in which meanings are contained. How those meanings can explode and create structures, forms. Even give nothingness a sound. She can even give silence a rounded feeling, a soul.Dastidar, Rishi (3 June 2022). "The best recent poetry – review roundup". The Guardian . Retrieved 6 February 2023. Victoria Adukwei Bulley wins 2023 Pollard International Poetry Prize". BookBrunch. 4 May 2023 . Retrieved 4 May 2023.

What grace,” she exclaims, going on to imagine photosynthesis through her own graceful analogy: these green things “use even our sighs // to make sweetness from light.” The allusion to sweetness and light, qualities first paired by Jonathan Swift, and recast by Matthew Arnold, is nicely judged for its literal and abstract meanings. There’s a way of controlling and saying to people, “Well, if you want to object, just object quietly. Don’t call it a siege. It’s a conflict. Let’s be objective and look at both sides. Let’s be well behaved. Let’s be quiet in how we speak about these things.” The underbelly of the word “quiet” is occurring and rising up over and over in this poem, and toward the end, the poem begins to indicate that: A quiet revolution of a book – subtle, supple and serious . . . Tender and true, complex and profound, Quiet is a beautiful balancing act of a book – a debut that brings Adukwei Bulley fully formed, starting something.” —2023 Rathbones Folio Prize JudgesSo many friends of mine who are parents will say that they suddenly became alert because their house was too quiet. Maybe because they’re used to there being a certain undercurrent of noise and that quiet itself is an indication of something that’s been concealed and something perhaps that shouldn’t be concealed. It can be lovely, but perhaps there’s some danger that’s occurring in quiet here, too. When I think of the political lenses of the word “quiet” in this poem, the question about the news about the war being over, for whom? And the question about your own internal world taking ease from living in a world that’s at quietude with itself. Those are all lovely things that we’d hope for everybody, I think. But the poem is troubling the idea as to whether they are really in existence for everyone.

Poetry Unbound is: Gautam Srikishan, Eddie Gonzalez, Lilian Vo, Lucas Johnson, Amy Chatelaine, Kayla Edwards, and me, Chris Heagle. At the ceremony it was also announced that the prize is looking for new sponsorship, as Rathbones has decided to step down following seven years as sponsor.

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Tender and true, complex and profound, Quiet is a beautiful balancing act of a book – a debut that brings Adukwei Bulley fully formed, starting something,” they added. Her writing has been published in works including Rising stars: new young voices in poetry (Otter-Barry Books, 2017, ISBN 9781910959374), Ten: poets of the new generation (Bloodaxe Books, 2017, ISBN 9781780373829), Granta, [7] The Guardian, [8] and The White Review. [9] Victoria Adukwei Bulley’s stunning poems draw you in with their melodious versatility, intellect and dexterity; perfectly embody the political through the personal; and are freedom-loving shapeshifters constantly changing form and animating ideas and language to surprising effect. This is her debut collection, but she arrives fully formed.” —Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other Clever and capacious poems . . . Bulley invites us in as she turns everything – intimate and secret, precious and precarious – inside out. . . . Bulley’s collection may begin quietly, but by the end her voice is clearly heard.” —Sana Goyal, TLS Those three are right after each other, but each with a space in between. And I find myself wondering: what’s the space? What’s the tension in between these lines doing? For whom is the war over? And who can go early to bed and curl up with a book? For whom is it occurring in a way that is giving a depth of peace? And for whom is it working in a way where their experience is being quietened, erased, silenced? “[A]s in the British are / so polite /.” And then “placid” and “placated,”“nuanced” and “complicated”.