Publisher's Synopsis
"Life keeps breaking into Lorna Thorpe's poems, complete with shoplifting, therapy, gravestones, sex, and the cool silver of heavenly ideals - all of it washed down with a bottle of cheap red - quite simply, a roller-coaster of a book."Alison Brackenbury'Don't still, my beating heart' Lorna Thorpe writes in her second collection, Sweet Torture of Breathing. It's a sentiment that reverberates throughout a book that deals with her close brush with death following a cardiac arrest, and the psychic death that preceded it. Here are poems that take a wry, feisty look at therapy, meditation, drug smuggling, acupuncture, angels, sex in hotel rooms and the platitudes of self-help books.The central section is a series of poems about people who died before their time, among them Janis Joplin, Maria Callas, Virginia Woolf and Ethel Rosenberg. But Thorpe is still here to tell her tale and she concludes with a section that shows her feeling her way back to life in poems that celebrate the sensual pleasures and chaos of love and living. Cultural references - from Cabaret and The Corpse Bride to Six Feet Under and Atonement - layer her work and extend its autobiographical reach. Plain-speaking and engaging, Thorpe's distinctive voice is carved out of the defiance and vulnerability of a survivor who isn't afraid to laugh at herself."On reading that Lorna Thorpe's Sweet Torture of Breathing 'deals with her close brush with death following a cardiac arrest, and the psychic death that preceded it,' I prepared myself for a harrowing read. However, this refreshingly good-humoured collection takes a philosophical and thoughtful look at the experience and celebrates the fact that she survived."Gillian Drake'Mind, body and spirit'In the literature of self-helpthere are no empty whiskey bottles,no cigarettes rolled from fag endssalvaged from 3 a.m. ashtrays, no fools in love. There are relaxing bubble baths and scented candles, of course, there are people turning cartwheelsin the sand, women in whiteboosting their immune system,drinking Celestial Seasonings Wellness Teabut no chipped green nail polish,no one sitting at the dining tablewith their boyfriendís daughter,three bottles of Chardonnay down,chair-dancing to The Supremes.There are quests by the dozen,heart warming tales of triumphover tragedy but no biting satires, no comedies of error.There are angels, spirit guides,and mystic healers to help you navigatethe path to peace and harmonybut no Eeyore, Scarlet OíHara or Don Draper. As for Madam Bovary,sheís signed up for a twelve step programmewith Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous,where sheís sharing how she gets her kicksfrom romantic highs, learning that she usesthem as a way to sidestep intimacy.'Fallen Tree'For decades I lay here turning bone-like,so dry Iíd have spat and cackled like a witchon a fire. Then the bark and wood-boring beetlesdrilled through my flaking skin, moss and lichenssprouted, mites burrowed a labyrinth of corridorswhere birds, bats and spiders set up home.Now Iím more magnificent and groundedthan I ever was in my heyday ñ just look at these ruffles of bracket fungus, these garlandsof ivy and beads of sulphur tuft. Oh I knowwhat those cocky saplings are thinking, vauntingtheir bendy spines, their lime green leaves.They see me as a crusty dowager sidelined at a ball,crammed into the moss velvet sheís wornto every party since Nijinsky choreographedthe Rite of Spring. But I donít miss all that jostling for sunlight and crowing about rookeries, not one bit.Theyíll tell you Iím past it but itís all happening in here,my seedless loins a den, guest house and larderand maybe, in a century or so, a nursery. See,the older I get, the more life I have in me.'Donít still, my beating heart'Weíre born with a finite number of heartbeats,according to the ancient yogis, who counselled calm,the steering clear of things that make our heart ratequicken, bring us closer to death. But who wantsto be prudent when it comes to the heart? Iíd rather splurge, fritter my remaining heartbeats on grape suede shoes and a plum crÍpe dress, slide on stockings youíll later peel off(there goes a few daysí worth), gamble them drinking Rioja and Hendrickís gin by the fire, dancing to Goran Bregovic on Spotify,eating your perfect roasties, crumbed with lemonand thyme (crisp as autumn outside, fluffy as pillows inside). Talking of pillows, Iíd like to spend more time in your bed, your hips clampedbetween my thighs, or drifting into sleep, face to face, foreheads touching, arms and legs entwined.Lorna Thorpe has worked as tour operator, social worker and barmaid. She now earns her living from freelance copywriting. As a fiction writer, her short stories have been short-listed for awards and have appeared in magazines and anthologies. Her 2005 pamphlet Dancing to Motown was a Poetry Book Societyís Pamphlet Choice. A Ghost in my House (2008) was her first book. She lives in Cornwall.
