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Urchin Belle
Urchin Belle is a debut collection that combines a genuine poetic originality with a startling no bullshit clarity. This is a voice born out of a life lived on the extreme peripheries of society.
The poems are as touching as they are heroic and as fragile as they are tough. The erotic and mundane collide with the surreal and extreme to produce a voice at once beguiling, shocking and entirely unapologetic.
The poems take you from downtown Cairo to Glencoe, to a world where sawn off shotguns, underage prostitution, dealers, pimps, bent cops and brutality are the norm. The stories of those living within and outside the system recur alongside the kind of raw erotic base need that leaves the reader wanting more.
The poems are as touching as they are heroic and as fragile as they are tough. The erotic and mundane collide with the surreal and extreme to produce a voice at once beguiling, shocking and entirely unapologetic.
The poems take you from downtown Cairo to Glencoe, to a world where sawn off shotguns, underage prostitution, dealers, pimps, bent cops and brutality are the norm. The stories of those living within and outside the system recur alongside the kind of raw erotic base need that leaves the reader wanting more.
- GenresPoetry
50 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2009
About the author
Jenni Fagan
31 books596 followersJenni Fagan has published four fiction novels, one non-fiction memoir, seven books of poetry and had scripts produced for stage and screen. She has three degrees, concluding as Dr. Of Philosophy, specialising in structuralism.
Jenni is an award winning, critically acclaimed poet and novelist. She is published in eight languages. A Granta Best of Young British Novelist (once-in-a-decade-accolade), Scottish Novelist of the Year (2016), Pushchart nominated, on lists for BBC International Short Story Prize, Impac Dublin, The Sunday Times Short Story Award, Encore, among others. The New York Times called her The Patron Saint of Literary Street Urchins.
Fagan is also an artist who exhibits canvas and sculptures, her bone artworks are on permanent display at Summerhall, where she kintsugi’d the building with poems in gold.
Jenni has written articles for the Independent, NY Times, Marie Claire. She has held Writer in Residence positions at the University of Edinburgh, Robert Louise Stevenson Fellowship and Gavin Wallace.
She has worked extensively with women in prison, and those from deprived backgrounds.
She is currently adapting The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh for tv, also The Panopticon, Luckenbooth and Hex.
Jenni is an award winning, critically acclaimed poet and novelist. She is published in eight languages. A Granta Best of Young British Novelist (once-in-a-decade-accolade), Scottish Novelist of the Year (2016), Pushchart nominated, on lists for BBC International Short Story Prize, Impac Dublin, The Sunday Times Short Story Award, Encore, among others. The New York Times called her The Patron Saint of Literary Street Urchins.
Fagan is also an artist who exhibits canvas and sculptures, her bone artworks are on permanent display at Summerhall, where she kintsugi’d the building with poems in gold.
Jenni has written articles for the Independent, NY Times, Marie Claire. She has held Writer in Residence positions at the University of Edinburgh, Robert Louise Stevenson Fellowship and Gavin Wallace.
She has worked extensively with women in prison, and those from deprived backgrounds.
She is currently adapting The Blade Artist by Irvine Welsh for tv, also The Panopticon, Luckenbooth and Hex.
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