New writing DEATH Guest Editor JACKIE KAY introduces her pick of poetry and prose on the theme of death so Michèle Roberts gets to guest-edit Erotic Writing and I get Death? Is that flattering or what? Death. Oh, well. I’ve had many a morbid thought. And Death often seems to me to be the only subject. I think we understand ourselves through confronting our mortality. When it comes down to it, there are only a handful of big subjects anyway: love, death, loss, sex, betrayal, identity. Most of our favourite writing has one or other as a central theme. It may be that there are no new themes for writers to discover: only new ways of telling age-old stories. Death is a difficult subject, because it is so easy to sink into sentiment, into the loose, blubbing, sobbing language of loss. It is difficult to be original or witty when writing about death. Yet real grief-struck people often laugh in the hearse, or do something wild and anarchic to match the spirit of the dear departed. Death is still so taboo in our society, it is difficult for writers to grapple with. We don’t lay bodies out in our best rooms any more. Many of us have never even seen a dead body. Our way of dealing with it is to ignore or placate; to talk in the sad clichés of ‘passing away’, ‘crossing over’, ‘falling asleep’. For the complete essay, and for Jackie's' full selection of poetry and prose on the theme of death, read issue 2 • Subscribe! Read a poem chosen by Jackie Kay: Visting my mother in the rest home by Gill Horitz For more on JACKIE KAY, go to www.contemporarywriters.com
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