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Yesterday evening I finished
with my imaginary boyfriend.
He knew what I was going to say
before I said it which was top of my list
of reasons why we should end it.
My other reasons were as follows:
He always does exactly what I tell him
Nothing in our relationship has ever surprised me
He has no second name.
He took it very well
all things considered.
He told me I was to think of him
as a friend and if ever I need him
I know where he is.
Lorraine Mariner was born and grew up in Upminster, Essex,
where she still lives. She studied English at Huddersfield
University and Library and Information Studies at University
College, London. She works at the Tate Library and Archive
at Tate Britain. She started learning to write poetry in Huddersfield
but the poems in this selection were written over the last
six years.
Lorraine Mariner has a completely distinctive
voice. The tone is dead-pan, but it lends itself perfectly
to poems that make us laugh aloud, as well as poems that bring
tears to the eyes. In the way that she achieves language that
balances humour and pathos, and in her wry, unsentimental take
on the world, she is a modern day Stevie Smith.
Carole Satyamurti
Lorraine Mariner's delightfully idiosyncratic
poems are full of surprises. Consistently engaging and artfully
improvised around the patterns of conversational speech,
they are also - often when one least expects it - marked
by a poignant tenderness. There's a wise-child knowingness
about these vivid scenarios of innocence and experience,
of choice and its consequences. "I
know now about the repercussions" says one of her speakers,
but that never diminishes the meticulous relish with which
this entertaining poet explores the situations which give rise
to them.
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