MILDLY EROTIC VERSE
REVIEWS FOR THE 1ST EDITION OF MILDLY EROTIC VERSE
‘A collection that can be dipped in and out of when one is need of distraction and diversion, rather than the physical relief that accompanies one-handed reads.
Alisande Fitzsimons, For Books’ Sake
‘Every poem in this collection is entirely genuine in its emotion; nothing is overblown, overdressed, no puddings over-egged.’
Alex Campbell, Sabotage Reviews
REVIEWS FOR THE 2ND EDITION OF MILDLY EROTIC VERSE
‘In the expanded edition of Mildly Erotic Verse, it’s immediately obvious that this love poetry is as far as possible from the wistful odes and idealised damsels of the traditional lustful troubadour. In particular, women are not merely the object of a male poet’s sighing ardour; their voices come through louder than ever, articulating powerful and complex romantic experiences.’
Charlotte Runcie, Daily Telegraph
‘Mildly Erotic Verse shows that humour and sensuality are not mutually exclusive. It brings to light the manifold ways sexuality can be experienced and expressed, whether with a partner or alone, real or imagined.’
Emma-Lee Davidson
OTHER TITLES FROM THE EMMA PRESS
POETRY ANTHOLOGIES
The Emma Press Anthology of Dance
Slow Things: Poems about Slow Things
The Emma Press Anthology of Age
Urban Myths and Legends: Poems about Transformations
The Emma Press Anthology of the Sea
This Is Not Your Final Form: Poems about Birmingham
The Emma Press Anthology of Aunts
PROSE PAMPHLETS
Postcard Stories, by Jan Carson
First fox, by Leanne Radojkovich
The Secret Box, by Daina Tabūna
Me and My Cameras, by Malachi O’Doherty
POETRY PAMPHLETS
Dragonish, by Emma Simon
Pisanki, by Zosia Kuczyńska
Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real, by Padraig Regan
Paisley, by Rakhshan Rizwan
POETRY BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
Falling Out of the Sky: Poems about Myths and Monsters
Watcher of the Skies: Poems about Space and Aliens
Moon Juice, by Kate Wakeling
The Noisy Classroom, by Ieva Flamingo
THE EMMA PRESS PICKS
DISSOLVE to: L.A., by James Trevelyan
The Dragon and The Bomb, by Andrew Wynn Owen
Meat Songs, by Jack Nicholls
Birmingham Jazz Incarnation, by Simon Turner
Bezdelki, by Carol Rumens
THE EMMA PRESS
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by the Emma Press Ltd
Reprinted in 2017
This is the expanded second edition of The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse (ISBN 978-0-9574596-2-5), which was first published in 2013. It features 17 of the original poems in addition to 33 new poems.
Poems copyright © individual copyright holders 2016
Selection copyright © Rachel Piercey and Emma Wright 2016
Illustrations and introduction copyright © Emma Wright 2016
All rights reserved.
The right of Rachel Piercey and Emma Wright to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
ISBN 978-1-910139-34-9
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Imprint Digital, Exeter.
The Emma Press
theemmapress.com
queries@theemmapress.com
Birmingham, UK
CONTENTS
Foreword by Emma Wright
Tight Dress, by Amy Key
Glamour, by Jon Stone
The boy who loved welding, by Holly Magill
Avventura, by Mary Gilonne
How to Kiss, by Robert Hamberger
Have you imagined having sex with me? by Emma Reay
Stars, Flowers, Grass and Us, by Isobel Dixon
A well-tempered keyboard, by Helen Clare
Phosphorescence, by Victoria Gatehouse
The Gift, by Alan Buckley
Pinkie Minimus, by Ikhda Ayuning Maharsi
Shave, by Ramona Herdman
The Globemakers, by Sophia Blackwell
My Love, the Shetland Trowie, by Stephanie Green
Hare, by Hugh Dunkerley
Office Hour, by Vasiliki Albedo Bennu
He liked her to talk about other women’s breasts, by Natalie Shaw
Contagion, by Victoria Kennefick
how we taste, by Laura McKee
Prize, by Jerrold Yam
Their letters, by Di Slaney
The Frozen Man, by Jacqueline Saphra
Yours truly, Stephen Dedalus, by Camille Ralphs
The Student, by Kirsten Irving
Helen of Troy in the Bath, by Kelley Swain
Radiocarbon Dating, by Anja Konig
Fairy Tale, by Lawrence Schimel
The best lovers, by Annie Brechin
the jackal and the moon, by Sara-Mae Tuson
Maine Man, by Angela Kirby
Down the Aisle, by Jo Brandon
Bananaphagy, by Hilaire
Come With Me, by Ruth Stacey
Casserole, by Jamie Baxter
Cool change before midnight, by Kristen Roberts
To September, from June, by Mel Denham
Birch, by Ruth Wiggins
Critical Reading, by Steve Nash
Rhyming Rita and Silver Sam, by Lynn Hoffman
Press Play, by Julia Bird
The Horse of My Love, by Nicola Warwick
photographs from our holiday in bed, by Ali Lewis
I Went to a Parthenogenesis Party and Met an Aphid, by James Horrocks
Bluebells, by Ali Thurm
Mad flash, by Nisha Bhakoo
Second Circle, by Stephen Sexton
Magician’s Assistant, by Richard O’Brien
Auto-Pornographia, by Amy McCauley
Cigarettes, by George David Clark
Layers, by Fiona Moore
Acknowledgements
About the editors
About the poets
About the Emma Press
Also from the Emma Press
FOREWORD FOR EXPANDED 2ND EDITION
When Rachel and I first started collecting mildly erotic poetry in 2013, the Emma Press was really very new and unknown. We had a decent number of submissions and were able to chose twenty-three poems which I still really love, but the resulting book – The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse – was extremely slim, even with the extra-thick paper I cunningly had it printed on.
Our original impulse in creating the book was to showcase and celebrate the diversity of human erotic experiences, so when we reached the end of our second print run of The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse it occurred to us that we might revisit our first bestseller and see what we could do with a few more years to our name.
Excitingly, the response to our call for submissions was so great that we were able to double the number of poems in the book, bringing extra shades (fifty?) of intimacy into the collection. There may now be more public discourse around desire, but I still believe – as I said in my introduction to the first edition – that society’s attitude towards sex has a long way to go. I hope that the second edition of Mildly Erotic Verse will be a valuable contribution to this ongoing discussion.
Emma Wright
BIRMINGHAM
January 2016
INTRODUCTION TO 1ST EDITION
I was pretty excited when erotic literature
hit the bestseller charts in 2011. It felt like another aspect of human sexuality had entered the mainstream, as thousands of people ruled that there was nothing shameful about wanting to read about sex and different sexual practices, even in public.
But it annoyed me that many of these bestsellers weren’t terribly erotic. They contained lashings of sex and were enjoyable romances, but they didn’t strike me as genuinely sexy and thrilling, and I wondered if their success was contributing to the misinterpretation of “eroticism” as equivalent with “sex”. This distinction between “Popular Erotica” and “Genuinely Erotic Fiction” might seem snobby or a matter of personal opinion, but when a society’s attitude towards sex is still a work in progress it feels important to assert the individual identity of eroticism and understand it as a much broader, looser concept than sex, for all that they have in common.
My instinct is that eroticism exists around the edges of sex, in the anticipation and desire and in memories and associations. It exists on both cerebral and carnal levels, and it’s hard to define because each person’s sense of it is utterly unique. It can be wild, hilarious, beautiful and alarming; difficult to describe but the easiest thing to spot once you know what you’re looking for – maybe a tiny leap in the stomach or a burst of exclamation marks in the brain.
I wanted to create a book which celebrated the diversity and eccentricity of eroticism and human sexuality, in relation to the physical aspects of sex as well as apart from it. Poetry is the ideal medium for examining elusive concepts without flattening them, and so The Emma Press Anthology of Mildly Erotic Verse was born.
I worried that some aspects of the brief (‘mildly’, ‘erotic’, ‘verse’) might deter some people, but my co-editor Rachel Piercey and I ended up collecting over 170 submissions from all over the world. The standard of submissions was high, and there were several which we liked a lot but had to let go because they didn’t fit with our vision for the book. Some were more romantic than erotic; some were sexual and nothing more. There was a whole tranche of darkly erotic poems which piqued our interest but made us realise that we wanted the book to be enjoyable and encouraging, not depressing.
Which isn’t to say that there are no discomfiting poems in our final selection. Quite the contrary: we wanted the anthology to skate the line between teasingly sketchy and uncomfortably raw, and I hope there are poems in this book which will surprise readers and challenge their notions of what other people – and they – find erotic. Some, like Julia Bird’s Press Play and Kristen Roberts’ Cool change before midnight, approach their subject from a distance, positively vibrating with restraint, while others, like Anja Konig’s Radiocarbon Dating and Emma Reay’s Have you imagined having sex with me? are exhilaratingly direct.
Rawness is a key part of this collection’s identity, and we were conscious when selecting the poems that we wanted the book as a whole to deliver an unglossed depiction of eroticism. We wanted it to be true to the reality of adult life, which is full of mess and complications; there is space for romance and tenderness, and even the odd fairytale, but in real life erotic moments occur between the mundane and the distinctly unerotic, and are no less erotic for that. Tight Dress, by Amy Key, and Jon Stone’s Glamour both examine human interactions on such an intimate level that our initial discomfort turns to awe. Magician’s Assistant, by Richard O’Brien, takes place in a retail park and a budget hotel room; and the speaker in To September, from June, by Mel Denham, smells of car-exhaust while her lover dreams of caravans.
A more ambitious aim for the anthology, which goes back to my irritation with the bestselling erotic novels, was to find a new vocabulary for eroticism and sex. I feel we have reached a point where the standard phrases for evoking eroticism have lost their ability to surprise and inspire, and every stock verb, noun, adjective and adverb makes sex sound cartoonish and unappealing. Some words just need to be used more sensitively, while others should probably be laid to rest. A penis has never sounded good when throbbing, never mind the fact of being called a penis. The poets we found understood this, and among my favourite words in this anthology are new words such as resolving, smashed, bones, spoon, moulding, trace, shallowing; and more familiar ones like warm, suck, stroke, wet.
I have high hopes for this little book, which is the product of so many talented poetic imaginations. I could not be more delighted with the poems assembled inside these covers and I feel tremendously lucky to have encountered such witty, generous, insightful writers. Eroticism is alive and well in their hands.
Emma Wright
WINNERSH
July 2013
MILDLY EROTIC VERSE
AMY KEY
Tight Dress
I’m in the tight dress. The one that prevents dignified sitting.
The tight dress suggests I’m prepared to be undressed.
Do my thighs flash through the seams?
I try to remember if the bed is made, or unmade.
The wind is wrapping up the sound of our kissing.
I wonder should I undress first or should you undress first.
I’m not sure I can take off the dress in a way that looks good.
I consider if I should save up sex until morning.
We are far gone and I’m better at kissing when sober.
I find that your earlobes provide the current fascination.
On my bedside table are three glasses of water and my favourite love letter.
I try to untie your shoes in a way that is appalling.
JON STONE
Glamour
Beneath the boiled wool, he’s just a skellybones,
and underneath the skellybones, a fumbling boy,
and underneath the boy, he’s one of Jakey’s twins,
and under that he’s nothing but a bumblebee.
Peel back the bee and he’s a coddled emperor,
and under that, she stumbles on a beery goon
but under that, none other than Hercule Poirot,
and underneath Poirot, he’s just a boy again.
And she’s a sweet thing underneath the stars and spurs,
a cloud beneath the sweet thing, and then under that
he finds a girl who sports a look of faint surprise,
but she too falls away and leaves a cinder smut.
The cinder smut’s a cover; she’s a grizzly bear
and then a toymaker and then a tomahawk,
and finally a girl who’s been to Zanzibar,
a girl who thinks she might be an insomniac.
They know the thing to do tonight is sleekly slide
against each other’s planes the way they do in films,
be spoon and syrup, glass and shadow, blade and blade.
But now the smell of overripeness overwhelms
the both of them, and out they slip from underneath
the glamours that had all but pinned them in their place,
two grubbied-up potato dolls with sticky breath
and all the more delighted for their ugliness.
HOLLY MAGILL
The boy who loved welding
1.
Tipsy with clumsy-lust,
we skived the afternoon.
His overalls sweated
oil onto my office-white
on my new skirt.
We didn’t care: threw them
to tangle their own limbs
on his bedroom floor.
It was all new to him;
not much less to me.
The single bed squeaked.
Could have sworn
I heard
ice cream van chimes.
Halfway he grabbed my hips,
bellowed a startled laugh:
‘You’re better than welding!’
2.
Shouldn’t have done it and his mum
smirked at me, picked a bit of hay
from my hair – did I want
a cup of tea? I swallowed it,
&
nbsp; a hot politeness new to me
but fast growing habitual;
the backs of my thighs itched
with grass seed and I gripped
the sweaty edge of their good sofa.
MARY GILONNE
Avventura
Strange how giving head reminds me of Venice.
How light unzipped slow towards Murano,
a glassing of focus, that slick lap of water salting the quay.
You taught me Moon Cream Carrara, Honey Travertine,
the way veins seemed to shift as marble warmed
along those intricacies of Italian classic columns.
How to finger a basso-relievo with closed eyes,
feel the fine chiselled line between its shadowed folds,
and always use a tip of tongue to taste each grain
of caviale, before the bursting bitter swallow.
ROBERT HAMBERGER
How to Kiss
LESSON 1
‘D’you want me to show you how to kiss?’
I was sixteen and greedy to learn.
She was my brother’s girlfriend under the moon,
standing outside a pub; the two of us
dry while he queued inside, oblivious.
It was worth the guilt. I stooped like a heron
to scoop a fish, as if breaking the skin
of water. She raised her throat, and this
moment banished feathers and scales. Her tongue
dipped briefly inside my mouth like the taste
of someone else, licked and gone.
I wanted more. My thumb stroked her wrist,
but my brother came barging out again
balancing bitter drinks to quench our thirst.
LESSON 2
‘A little less tongue.’ That’s Patrick’s advice.
I found him in the sauna, a white towel
draped over his loins; drowsy after a prowl
down dim-lit corridors where one man’s face,
another man’s torso, might entice.