Poet Christina Pugh celebrates Cocteau Twins in new work

• By CocteauTwins.com
• NEWS
• 23-Aug 2021

Prize-winning American poet Christina Pugh has published a new volume of poems, Stardust Media (University of Massachusetts Press). The eponymous poem invokes Elizabeth Fraser in its epigraph, “You know all the transcendent sounds. It’s all sound all the way through.” (Originally from an interview with Mondo 2000, 1993.)

The poem goes on to invoke Cocteau Twins—specifically the album Treasure and, less directly, Liz and Robin’s recording of “Song to the Siren.”

Here is an excerpt:

…They named that album Treasure
like a dead hieroglyphic. And I recall its cover
an ersatz Hellenic—a half-shattered Venus
in a sea-glazed cloud…

We can’t reproduce it all (the above excerpt is reproduced by permission of the author and her publisher). You’ll need to find a copy of the book to enjoy the (much longer) poem and the others in this collection in their entirety. ▣