Split

by Juana Adcock

Juana Adcock’s Split begins with a conversation between a woman and a snake and ends with thirteen voices affirming the vitality, difficulty and necessity of attuned communication. These poems question where we might find fulfilment, power and hope, and it turns out that’s rarely where we’ve been taught they exist. Split is at once playful, philosophical, angry, nuanced and ultimately transformative.
Split is the Poetry Book Society Choice for Winter, 2019.


Juana Adcock's Split is one of the most exciting debuts I've ever read. Formally and linguistically innovative, Adcock's poetic dialogues expand the terms of lyric address to interrogate language itself. Here we find both violence and desire at the level of the word, upending the rootedness of power with tremendous skill and captivating authority. – Sandeep Parmar


Juana Adcock’s dazzling collection is a lyrical exploration of the intersection between Mexican myths, cultural displacements and language in the context of personal and political interrogations. Split fiercely questions notions of translingualism, the female body and what it means to transcend history and ancestry. Her poetry moves between Mexico, Scotland and beyond, and speaks with an urgency and nuance that is unique in the Latinx poetry world. – Leo Boix


“When asked why she decided to stay here the birlin traveller responded:/ it’s the way people speak” “Words are such good travellers/ they pick up meanings as they go.” Two quotations from the many spinning in my head after the first dip into the gorgeous richness and muliplicity of the exhilarating territory that is Juana Adcock’s work. Doppelgangers and doubles are nothing to the possessor of the 'Seven Poet Selves'. Here is sharp specificity, humour, daring. These poems rock. They sing." – Liz Lochhead

Genres: Poetry

106 pages, Paperback

Published August 1, 2019

Reviews

[Sarah]

Loved this!! A new favourite 💗

[Jesús de la Garza]

Las correspondencias secretas de las cosas como punto de arranque: cuerpo-montaña-postal del Tíbet.
Lo uno en lo otro: principio surrealista: todas las cosas contienen a todas las otras cosas.
Descomposición de los hilos, de lo general a lo elemental en un epígrafe de Pessoa.
La voz de las cosas cotidianas.
"Estirar el hilo" es decir, estirar las palabras. Buscar la textura del lenguaje, la textura de algo más allá de lo racional. Evocación mística.
La poesía como juego de ilusiones.
Una cosa es otra cosa es otra cosa que se transforma.
¿Hay una verdad oculta en los objetos?
"Los humanos necesitan organizarlo todo" La mujer como hiladora, creadora. Bifuraciones.
"Sólo los hombres quieren irse del cuerpo", "El cuerpo como herramienta de conocimiento"
El lenguaje es una manera de robar el conocimiento del cuerpo.

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Hay que volver a hacer las cosas. Un vestido, el vestido que cubre al cuerpo.
Conexión: Ursula K. Le Guin "Ella los desnombra", "Alfabeto" Christensen.
Otra manera de entender el mundo, más allá de la razón iluminada, masculina, heteropatriarcal.
¿La intuición? ¿De qupe otra manera, que no sea la razón, la organización, el orden, construimos nuestras representaciones del mundo?

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Una actualización de la mística, tema del que soy inexperto. ¿De qué manera deshacer el vestido de la razón, secreta responsable de un país poblado de fosas?

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Un lenguaje nuevo. El amor. Un lenguaje personal. Deseo de ser algo, de encarnarse. Soy esto, soy esto, soy esto. "Nuestros diálogos son tan violentos".

La violencia sistemática y sistémica del lenguaje categórico. Ejercitada hasta perder el cuerpo.

Romper la frontera geográfica, idiomática, la organización del espacio, la nacionalidad. "Lengua madre, no me abandones".

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La traducción al español de este libro es la continuación performática de la obra.

Split-dualidad-bifurcación.

[Vicki Husband]

Adcock is a dynamic philosopher her ideas travels across borders. The poet is effortlessly at home in many languages, crossing and connecting them, questioning myth and archetype, the old powers, of wealth and misogyny. This book is at turns: contemplative, interrogative, political, funny, lyrical and disruptive.

[Wild Horses]

I’ve loved this book and imagine I will revisit it often. I’d worried recently that I’d somehow closed my mind to reading, or rather reading and enjoying, poetry by poets I was unfamiliar with but Juana Adcock has cured me. Thank you!

[Will]

Not a big poetry fan but love playing with languages. Also being trapped alone in Italy and having conversations with snakes? I vibe with it

[Danielle]

The gap between a 3 & a 5 could well be down to my failing to understand some of the poems, so more me lacking than the book. I enjoyed what I could!

[Karla Garcia]

Es el primer poemario que leo completo y creo que siempre lo recordaré por ello.

Conecté con varias historias y ahora estoy triste y pensativa.

[erika]

Se pone denso de repente.

[Dee]

This is one of the most engaging collections of poetry I’ve read in years, dealing with language and belonging and straddling Mexican and Scottish culture. Although written in English, there are brief flickers of Spanish and Scots making this a book with a truly international focus. This is a political collection and unashamedly so; in an era when isolationism and xenophobia seem to be the order of the day, this is a celebration of the gift of multiculturalism, as well as a call for the liberation of women.

[Mark Ward]

2.5 really