The Tattoo Collector
Exploring identity, belonging, and the art of tattoos
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Nine Arches Press
Published:3rd Oct '24
Should be back in stock very soon
This debut poetry collection explores identity and belonging through the lens of tattoos, weaving connections across diverse cultures and experiences in The Tattoo Collector.
Set against the vibrant backdrops of Hong Kong, Scotland, and London, The Tattoo Collector delves into the complex interplay between body, ecology, and class. In this striking debut collection, poet Tim Tim Cheng invites readers to explore how tattoos serve as a vital connection amidst protests, music gigs, and personal narratives. Through his poignant verses, Cheng weaves a tapestry of themes including family history, displacement, and the political landscape, all while navigating the intricate spaces between East and West.
Cheng's declaration that he has 'moved to a country called writing' sets the tone for a collection that is both reflective and incisive. Each poem acts as a window into the multifaceted experiences of identity and belonging. As the verses traverse different geographical and emotional terrains, they illuminate the profound relationship between the human body and the environments it inhabits. The tattoo, in Cheng's hands, becomes a powerful narrative device, revealing deeper truths about resistance and acceptance.
In The Tattoo Collector, readers are invited to confront the stories that tattoos tell, not just on the surface but also in the layers beneath. The poems are intimate and polyphonic, drawing us into spaces like museums, hospitals, and graveyards, where the past and present collide. Cheng's needle-sharp imagery compels us to look closely, urging us to examine what is displayed and what remains hidden, thus creating a rich dialogue between the visible and the obscured.
“Tim Tim’s urgent and taut poems articulate the structures we are born to, bound by, and spend a life breaking free from. The Tattoo Collector digs under the artifice of skin, language and even country to recover and define the self, before looking outward, asking “Why do I still believe—like a stranger— / that being understood could save us?” In spare and unrelenting language, these haunting poems explore the journey to—and cost of—chasing that understanding. This is a necessary and vital collection, one that articulates the experience of so many of us.” — Marjorie Lotfi
-- Marjorie Lotfi“Each poem in The Tattoo Collector is finely conceived and edited into a morsel of acute nourishment; and we didn't know how hungry we were, as readers. Words and characters are flying fish and inky needles. As language glints and travels, we find new stories and understandings making shuddering interfaces with our skin. We're changed as we read, marked, pierced, aroused. Tim Tim Cheng guides us through the political and personal, land and water, stylish use of language and the bigger risks of love. The poet is an original yet a storyteller of place and family; a rebel both generous and shy.”
-- Anthony Vahni Capildeo“Tim Tim Cheng's The Tattoo Collector is an incredible debut. I was blown away by its breadth and precision of feeling / phrasing. It pays as close attention to the linguistic whirl of "all that grammar and glimmer" as it does to rescuing familial and political memory. It captures how phrases, like people, break, stutter, and start again. And though it realises that "being understood will not save us", it extends our sense of who "us" is and, in doing so, achieves something hard and redemptive.” Will Harris
-- Will HaISBN: 9781916760042
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