Synopsis
The invigorating poems in The Last Hour of Sleep introduce a daughter, sister and woman awakening to her past and her present passions. With honesty and panache they celebrate the complexities of her sometimes difficult relationships with places, horses and people. DON’T TAKE THIS PERSONALLY but I might persuade myself that I’d definitely still fancy you rotten, if only you’d have a good wash, perhaps slosh a dash of Givenchy, install a power shower even. Then maybe we’d stand an outside chance of staying together longer than an instant coffee in the morning which is already looking much too far ahead. Basically I’d really like it if you were gone now, out of my bed, back to wherever it was you said you lived. Was it Highgate? And I’d be very grateful if you never showed up at work on Monday as the office equipment salesman (who still looks just like that actor) who I lusted after for the whole of last week because of an Irish accent and a name like Gabriel. THE VISITOR As far as I know he never even liked it here but quite suddenly, after staying away almost nine years, my father is back to visit me in Kerala, South India — in the middle of night (as you’d expect) but also during the afternoons around teatime, riding the same airhorn-blasting hot and dusty trains. And he seems to like to call especially before breakfast, during that last hour of sleep in hotel bedrooms. He looks about sixty, but to be truthful, to date him accurately, I’d have to compare him with the photos. Definitely he’s much happier. Just the other morning he arrived, shorter than me as usual, and swept me off my feet, lifted me right off the ground and hugged me for no reason. Put me down! I’m much too heavy. Put me down! You’ll break. But he didn’t and he doesn’t and my toes never touched our old-gold, top-floor landing carpet. He fills out his trousers again and his cheeks are back to normal: fat, tanned, glistening and clean-shaven. I kiss him and kiss him, inhale that mix of Gillette foam and Floris’ Rose Geranium. And all the time he dizzies me with smiles. “Naomi Jaffa’s poems — intimate, sensuous, sensual — have the vivid texture of real life. Her bold use of the domestic, the ordinary, illuminates often disturbing or ambivalent emotion. She writes brilliantly about adolescence, a certain daddy’s girl rebelliousness. Here are nakedly and exuberantly female poems which conjure sexuality, memory, longing, grief and pack many a shock of emotion.” Liz Lochhead Naomi Jaffa grew up in London and Scarborough. With family roots in Russia and Germany, her Jewish parents were both professional musicians. Since 1991 Naomi has lived in East Anglia, working initially as Suffolk’s Literature Development Worker. For the past five years she has been director of the annual international Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. This is her first collection.
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