The Girls in the Red House Are Singing, Tracey Slaughter
Te Herenga Waka University Press, 2024

from opioid sonatas

#                                                                                        [allegro]                                                     

I crashed. It was choral. The glass formatted the light. She
was driving a scream into distance. The gravel doubled over. Halt
this. It was illustrated. Let the scalpel tell you what
happened. That was a trickle of mercy
from her ear. Many revolutions. Steer with the thorax. Sunlight
belts you to the ambulance. She bleeds
on the blue nurse. Asleep in needles. The car is a seven
pointed flower. She was singing in the blindspot. The red line holds
a nocturne. It was metal. It was god. It was weightless. I
misspelt collision with my wrists. Please radio. He stood
on the right, observing the passenger tendons. Swung
a corona through the windshield. She
was dropping. It was filigreed. He smashed
the screen like a recital. I was just out of town. It was quartz.
I needed. Sparkles on the gurney. Conjoined. I
bruised the rearview. An eyeful. It was dressage. She was singing
from the glovebox. Tell the doctor what
didn’t. Aluminium can swim. The lid. The back
of your thoughts are sticky. Staunch this. Four door. Intravenous. Admitted.
Singing deuteronomy. Reversible in her red jacket. Her laughter tied
at the back. Inserted. Facedown floating to the next
prescription. Sunlight welds you to errata. That was the cathedral. Tell
the doctor you’re an article. His crowbar smashed the scheme
of things. Regain a mouthful of memory
in water. The white believes in minimalism. It was solitude. The fenceline
blessed us. It shattered. Erasure scrapes chairs. Open all sides. Her angels
birthed against disposable plastic. Solve this. She
was singing to the haemorrhage
in waiting. The nurse made a red head
or tail of it.

Tracey Slaughter

Reading Tracey Slaughter’s The Girls in the Red House Are Singing, is to traverse multiple routes into the human heart, body, experience, to track an anatomy of pain, the legacy of wound. Subject matter eyeballs difficulty: from the aftermath of a devastating car crash with its opiate relief, grief and suicidal thoughts, to elusive balm in hotel adultery, to drawing to the surface sexual violence endured as a teenager.

The first sequence, ‘opioid sonatas’, won the Manchester Poetry Prize in 2023, and the judges mentioned how they kept reading the poems aloud. And I can see why. As I listened to Tracey read for this feature, I just wanted to hear the whole book. The entire collection offers language at its most elastic vibrant electrifying sizzling playful serious razor-edged. The sonic interplay of words astonishes, mesmerises. It is like turning an extraordinary album up loud loud loud and feeling it in every pore of your being. It is like the most melodic dark with different instruments singing out, chords connecting, harmonies and disharmonies overlaying.

The Girls in the Red House Are Singing could be written as chapter-book narrative, sentence-based memoir, but Tracey’s poetic language produces music of cut slice bruise. The rhythm, the swings and heightening what is to live, to be alive, to experience the edge and ravine. This collection sets my nerve endings sparking. Here I am, on my own spiky road of pain and recovery, persistent dark and light, and this extraordinary gift of a book is a form of restoration. I absolutely love it.

The readings

Photo credit: Joel Hinton

‘lifetime prescription (for the chronic)’

‘psychopathology of the small hotel’

Tracey Slaughter is the author of The Girls in the Red House are Singing (Te Herenga Waka, 2024), Devil’s Trumpet (Te Herenga Waka, 2021), if there is no shelter (Ad Hoc, 2020),Conventional Weapons (Te Herenga Waka, 2019), deleted scenes for lovers (Te Herenga Waka, 2016), The Longest Drink in Town (Pania Press, 2015) and her body rises (Random House, 2005). Her poetry, short stories and personal essays have received numerous awards including the 2024 Moth Short Story Prize, the 2024 ABR Calibre Essay Prize, the 2023 Manchester Poetry Prize, the 2020 Fish Short Story Prize, the 2015 Landfall Essay Prize, the 2014 Bridport Prize and BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards in 2004 and 2001. She lives in Kirikiriroa Hamilton, where she teaches Creative Writing at the University of Waikato. She was founding editor of Mayhem Literary Journal, and is the editor of Poetry Aotearoa. Most recently she has been collaborating on a screenplay adaptation of The Longest Drink in Town with writer Liam Hinton, and working on a book of personal essays. 

Te Herenga Waka University Press page