Here’s Looking at You Kid
Here’s Looking at You Kid
Helen Burke
Paperback
‘Stories make up 98% of my body – the other 2% is chocolate mixed with hope.’
Helen Burke was a poet constantly 'on tour', and at each stop she made time to take requests from the audience, for favourite poems from her vast back catalogue. These ‘requested poems’ were brought together for Here’s Looking at You Kid, where readers can at long last discover the secrets of ‘hospital lingo’, find out why dogs are so especially kind, learn how to handle mothers who are at ‘that difficult age between 81 and 81-and-a-half’, and the lurid details of ‘what they found in the poet’s stomach’. These are poems selected by the public, and tested on audiences all over the world. Each one is someone’s favourite – but which will be yours?
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Imprint: Valley Press
Published: October 2014
ISBN: 9781908853424
Catalogue no: VP0057
Page count: 64
Trim size: 198 x 129 mm
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Praise for Here’s Looking at You Kid:
“These are poems to read out loud for their wit, character and dialogue. They capture the sound of a voice, the essence of a person, with sad notes to sweeten the humour.”
— Gillian Clarke
“These poems sprawl all over you with the energy of a teething Labrador pup ... They are made with a hopeless love for humanity and a knowing compassion for our failings. They are of the Planet Lingo, the Planet Burke, unique, determined and inimitable.”
— Paula Meehan
“Burke writes wittily and sensitively, with insight, and not a jot of sentimentality.”
— Mike Jenkins
“Life-affirming ... This is poetry as alchemy.”
— Bill Kirton
About the author
Helen Burke (1953-2019) was a poet widely published and anthologised; at her peak, it seemed there was not a single piece of paper in the world that did not contain a Burke masterpiece, and oh, what a wonderful world it was.