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    Honorifics
    Honorifics
    Honorifics
    Ebook95 pages35 minutes

    Honorifics

    By Cynthia Miller

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    About this ebook

    Cynthia Miller's debut poetry collection, Honorifics, is an astonishing, adventurous, and innovative exploration of family, Malaysian-Chinese cultural identity, and immigration. From jellyfish blooms to glitch art and distant stars, taking in Greek gods, space shuttles and wedding china along the way, Miller's mesmerizing approach is experimental, luscious, and expansive with longing - "My skin hunger could fill a galaxy".
    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
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNine Arches Press
    Release dateJun 24, 2021
    ISBN9781913437169
    Honorifics
    Author

    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.png

      4.

      img4.png

      5.

      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

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