Supplication, lament, invitation, warning; invocation, danger, devotion. You cannot consider these poems anything but true, but to what world do they correspond? With flames and shadows, birds and stars, for days of rage and of wonder, Vaughan Pilikian takes us on a series of risky, exalting journeys to the end of lyric. Read and live them.

Vaughan Pilikian was born in London to an American mother and Armenian father. After studies in classical languages, fine art and filmmaking, he has produced work in different fields as a scholar, filmmaker, painter, sculptor, designer, theatre director, performance artist and screenwriter. He is the author of two previous collections of poetry, and two volumes of translations from ancient Sanskrit epic.

Praise for Vaughan Pilikian’s Lyrics:

‘His poems are haunting, mysterious and memorable. They deserve to be sung.’

CAROLE SATYAMURTI

‘I have been very struck indeed by the voice of these poems – something
absolutely authentic, which is so rare these days.’

IAIN M^cGILCHRIST

TO THE BLACKENED ONE,

to the burned one,
to the one falling and falling,
to Icarus,
to the sun,
to all its ferocity has undone.

To the shackdenizens,
to the burnt house people,
to the mother
with the fatherless sons,
to any who does not make the best of things,
to any the settled world shuns.

To the ragpicker,
to the nothing ones,
to the outlaw without knife or gun,
to the beggar who counts
on fingerless hands,
whose reckoning will never be done.

To the heroes
who have torn off their trinkets,
who have slashed the skin of the drum:
to the mute brave ones descending
into the eye
of what they have done.

Vaughan Pilikian