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Nicole Flattery

Nicole Flattery's criticism has appeared in the GuardianThe Irish Times and the LRB. Her story collection Show Them A Good Time was published in 2019. Her favourite Chantal Akeman film is News From Home.



Articles Available Online


Chantal Akerman’s ‘My Mother Laughs’

Book Review

October 2019

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

October 2019

There’s a scene in the documentary I Don’t Belong Anywhere, about the Belgian filmmaker’s Chantal Akerman’s life and work, where she discusses her only...

Book Review

August 2018

Lorrie Moore's ‘See What Can Be Done’

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

August 2018

Lorrie Moore writes in her introduction to See What Can Be Done that, at the start of her career,...

JOY OF THE EYES   The future is not the beginning, but the forerunner, of a new intense-formation   The first time that you see me, you will see me, without implication of time   The future expresses what is going to take place at some time to come, adding on the one hand an implication of will or intention, on the other hand of promise or threatening   If you, villain, had not stopped [prāgrahīṣyaḥ] my mouth, Without any implication of time   Circles of future and desiderative border one another; the one sometimes expected where the other might be met   I, conditional, want you to stop my mouth; will you stop My mouth encircles the sustain of these refusals: Sometimes and unexpected, unreasonable and polite   If you, beautiful, would perceive this new stress-formation, Reducing the noise of our [śyas] tomorrow, Heads shaved, future universe, ‘victorious banners unlowered’   Discipline of desire begins in the mouth         PENSIVE REFLECTION   Imagine a time in which you feel happy In your happiness, you imagine another time in which you feel unhappy You are in bed, your love is in your arms; the room is cold and it belongs to you   This is the tower of the past The battlements are formed of anthills, the anthills the curves of the goddess, the curves snakes agreeing sealing themselves away Lookouts lie face down, mouths open to the earth, swallowing the matter of their warnings Lookouts are snakes   In your unhappiness, you imagine another time in which you feel happy You are standing, you catch sight of your love across the room One or both of you is wearing a uniform The room is warm; it does not belong to you   The tower is oversaturated and impossible to date Lookouts’ mouths fill with earth, earth itching, itching converting warning to retch Lookouts reduce the noise of their retching; snakes containing the warnings in the smoothed lines of their swallows   This is how to conjugate the old future tense    

Contributor

January 2018

Nicole Flattery

Contributor

January 2018

Nicole Flattery’s criticism has appeared in the Guardian, The Irish Times and the LRB. Her story collection Show Them A Good...

Carmen Maria Machado’s ‘Her Body and Other Parties’

Book Review

January 2018

Nicole Flattery

Book Review

January 2018

I’m reluctant to admit this but it’s often easier for me to write about a book I hated rather than a book I loved....

READ NEXT

feature

March 2016

Behind the Yellow Curtain

Annina Lehmann

feature

March 2016

Notes from a workshop   At first, there is nothing but a yellow curtain at the back of the...

feature

September 2014

Missing Footage

Raphael Rubinstein

feature

September 2014

The discovery of absences (lacks, lacunae) and their definition must in turn lead the filmmaker as composer to the...

Prize Entry

April 2016

Seasickness

David Isaacs

Prize Entry

April 2016

‘How would you begin?’   She puts a finger to her lips, a little wrinkled still from the water,...

 

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