Talk a Blue Streak

In 1990, a girl moves to the USA. She goes to school, learns English, becomes an American citizen, and aspires to become a writer. But what is she to make of the extravagance, bombast, and damage she encounters in the new country’s language and customs? And what about the shrink-wrapped hunks of frozen meat, hurricanes, and the cat-eye marbles scattered on the road?

Hugely pleasurable, in turns funny and dolorous, Talk a Blue Streak examines how the act of writing declares a selfhood, but one that is always performative, looped, and curlicued.

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‘Matsumoto’s intense focus on the particularity of the world of things makes her one of our great contemporary not-so-still life artists.’

— Lucy Mercer

‘A thought-provoking, soul-stirring read making the familiar feel new and the fleeting moments of life linger long after the final word.’

— Peter Gizzi

‘Talk a Blue Streak is about girlhood, friendship and becoming yourself between registers and alongside someone else.’

— Jennifer Hodgson

‘This humorous text takes the uncanny and absurd virtue of a sun-faded, plastic alien culture and spreads it out on the yard sale rug for all to see.’

— Graham Lambkin

‘There’s a “shambolic and candied jamboree” constantly streaming from the headphones: in Lila Matsumoto’s poems, it’s this road-tripping DIY “jangly lo-fi insurgency” that I love the most.’

— Tom Betteridge

‘Reading these poems made me feel like I was having the best, funniest, most profound conversation with a friend. It made me feel I love my funny friend, like that this moment talking together is the distillation of all I could ask of life.’

— Nisha Ramayya