Just published by Penguin is Selected Poems by my daughter Sophie Hannah:
Sophie Hannah's first book was greeted with amazement. The Poetry Review declared, 'Shall I put it in capitals? SOPHIE HANNAH IS A GENIUS.' Each subsequent collection has been formally more inventive, thematically more complex, yet each has met with a similar welcome, and she has become that rare thing, an acclaimed and bestselling poet. Published for the first time in Penguin, this volume includes all of Hannah's best loved verses from The Hero and The Girl Next Door, Hotels Like Houses, Leaving and Leaving You and First of the Last Chances.To mark the publication of the volume, I reproduce one of Sophie's poems below, with permission.
None of the Blood by Sophie Hannah
None of the blood that is in your body
is in my body. None of the blood
that is in my body is in your body.
Whatever you are, you are not my blood.
None of the flesh that is on your body
is on my body. None of the flesh
that is on my body is on your body.
Whatever you are, you are not my flesh.
I have shared a bottle of wine with a bigot
(none of the eggshells, none of the mud
in my kitchen and garden, your kitchen and
garden).
None of the flesh. None of the blood
that is in my kitchen is in your kitchen.
(I am being rude. I am not just being rude.)
None of your garden is in my garden.
I have shared a picnic bench with a prude.
Furniture, yes, means of transport, yes,
but no to soul and no to bone
(none of your sellotape, none of your glue).
Yes to some stranger, no to you.
[From Sophie Hannah, Selected Poems.]
