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A collection of works by and including Hannah M. Teasdale
Every Sunday night, after I was dropped to her, I prayed to find a 'Snoopy' watch under my pillow by dawn, Forty years later, every Sunday night, I pray only that the pillow under my head is both familiar and safe. I always turn the pillow at dawn: just in case. Through a series of stark, vivid snapshots this sizzling, brave work doesn't just offer glimpses of Hannah's life, but instead leads us right to the depths of humanity. In true Teasdale form, Indelicate Sundays deals with the difficult head on, with unflinching and admirable honesty. Yet Hannah's turn of phrase is delicate and the poems are exquisitely crafted. Hannah's poems burn with white hot intensity and buzz with the undertow of yearning. The themes of fracture and loss circle the book, bleeding through every word, yet Hannah's unbreakable spirit and strength breathe life into the darkest of times and the book leaves you feeling uplifted. This poignant insight into a tortured life will leave you breathless and reeling and stirred to the very core. - Holly Winter-Hughes Hannah packages her trauma, vulnerability and strength into perfectly formed punches, the likes of which, you don’t realise have landed, until you’re knocked out. Brilliant. - Giovani Esposito Hannah Teasdale’s third collection of poetry charts a fractured life which starts when her mother announces they are leaving home. Leaving to a cold house with a ‘filthy’ bed a secret hobby of stealing things begins; ‘my first desire to take things that aren’t mine,’ but ‘I never take more than I feel owed.’ This start of a secret compulsive shame continues through teenage years into adulthood. The young girl feels lust when she looks at a photo of her grandfather as a young man then realises her knickers are wet when he burps after dinner. The adult woman keeps a score card of how long it has been that her lover hasn’t given her an orgasm and the mistress persuades her lover to get ‘an eye test’. Hannah’s poetry is surprisingly shocking but delicately direct. There are no happy endings. A relationship boils down to two facts; ‘We go to therapy. You take your pills’ and her child’s trousers smell of another woman's house. Life has become a ‘chaos of bent documents.’ She has become a mother who has left home and is crying for her lost child. - Dr Lucy English "If Anais Nin and Shane Meadows met at a bar to write prose and poems it may well end up like this book. An awareness of vulnerability is a strength and Hannah Teasdale expresses this with power and insight whilst creating an urban cinematographic vibe of working-class life without for one moment feeling sorry for itself or filing itself under a label. I also respected the straight talking yet structured poems like Glass Eyes and Untouched and how Teasdale doesn’t give a shit about avoiding the parallels of exploitation versus the innocence of a sexual and emotional awakening from child to adolescent to woman/human.". - Anthony Owen A straight-talking, direct and utterly beautiful collection from a poet confronting the hard realities and joyous dreams of contemporary human existence. Teasdale navigates an eventful journey from child to adulthood in all its ambiguity and shock. Shot through with violence, tension, tenderness and love, her poems don’t shy away from examining the beauty, terror and often difficult outcomes of decisions taken. Connections are made and broken, relationships soar and strain, secrets are hidden and laid bare. Teasdale faces the consequences head-on, and we are caught up in the force of her thoughts -whether trying to make sense of death as a child, how sex changes the dynamics between adults, or considering the stance of the ‘other’ woman in a relationship with a married man. Indelicate Sundays is a collection that is by turns unsettling and surprising, rooted as it is in a questioning world of childhood dreams and nightmares, and adult fantasies. Yet Teasdale’s poetic voice is one of surety and celebration. She is unafraid to draw on aspects of her life to speak to us all, and we are carried along with her in solidarity and wry recognition. The poems revealingly hark back and career forward, in a striking and unexpected style that is enlightening and immensely satisfying. It is no understatement to say that “these poems shimmer”. - Sara-Jane Arbury
Hannah Teasdale and Thommie Gillow have had very different experiences of motherhood but like many parents have found solace through sharing. Their collaborative collection Milked explores all aspects of motherhood, from the good, the bad, the smelly, the desperate and all-consuming nature of the role to dealing with older children who have learnt which buttons to press. A brave and honest look at; periods, miscarriages, pregnancies, abortions, postnatal depression and a mother's love, this book is separated into four sections, pre-conception, miscarriage, pregnancy and birth and then the ensuing parenthood. It draws on their own lives and the lives of those around them, and owes much to every bump they have ever known. Milked is for anyone who has ever thought about being a parent: whether successfully, unsuccessfully or with absolute horror at the very idea. It may make you cry or laugh or sing - whatever you do, Hannah and Thommie won't mind, they'll blame hormones.
Whilst I was in the process of editing this collection on the train en route to a gig in Birmingham, the woman sat next to me asked me what I was writing about. She had one eye on the flashing cursor between the words, metaphor and naked. She said she had 'never really got along with poetry at school' but a friend at AA is 'well into it' and reckons it would be good for her. With both eyes now fixed on my screen, she began to tell me how she had been married for a very long time, (probably with hindsight, way too young), and that although she had been happy and fulfilled with her 'lot', over time there had been something restless growing ever larger inside her. She wonders now if it was just boredom; the inevitability and monotony of a young family, sleeping with the same man every night, cooking, cleaning, washing, paying the bills. Normal life stuff. She met up with an ex-boyfriend from where she'd grown up and life began to feel exciting again. He took her back to feeling like a teenager - skipping round old haunts, making love in the park, smoking weed and discovering spirituality. Everything but the normal life stuff of a middle-aged mother. But then it all unravelled; she lost her husband and it turned out the ex-boyfriend should only ever have remained an ex. She's on her own now and wonders everyday what might have been if she had only wrestled a little harder with the restful something that had grown inside her. We turned and looked at one another, the silence sucking us in to one. I took her address and told her I'd send her a copy when it was finished. I thought she might get a lot out of it. Hannah Teasdale is a Bristol-based spoken word artist who has performed at numerous festivals stages around the South West. She is an integral voice in the vibrant scenes of Bristol and Bath, where her bittersweet realist point of view invites her audiences to slip her shoes on and go for a walk.
A collection of honest, fierce and beautiful poems about being a mother, from pregnancy and birth to growing up and leaving home. Curated by acclaimed anthologist Ana Sampson, Night Feeds and Morning Songs examines motherhood from all angles, capturing the mess and the madness, to the joy and the wonder. Immerse yourself in classic verse from Carol Ann Duffy, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jackie Kay and Sylvia Path, to poems from bold new voices Hannah Teasdale, Kate Baer, Liz Berry, Nikita Gill and Imogen Russell Williams to name but a few.
The Best Poetry Book in the World is a collection of popular poems from published poets from the last five years. Celebrating Burning Eye Publishing's 5th birthday, this anthology brings together all the anthems, the foot stompers, tear-bringers, finger clickers, belly laughing crowd-pleasers under one cover. Prepare yourselves.
Cultural and racial diversity remain essential to this riveting urban poetry collection, which features some of the best UK emerging talent from over 41 contributors. Join with the poets as they write about the many issues facing humanity, challenging social injustice whilst provoking action. The book is an inspiration for change and an encouragement of creativity.