{"id":53,"date":"2021-10-05T19:26:48","date_gmt":"2021-10-05T19:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lilamatsumoto.com\/?page_id=53"},"modified":"2026-04-16T09:47:54","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T09:47:54","slug":"poetry","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/lilamatsumoto.com\/","title":{"rendered":"Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Published by Monitor, publication date 21 May 2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pre-order book here<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s language and customs? And what about the shrink-wrapped hunks of frozen meat, hurricanes, and the cat-eye marbles scattered on the road?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hugely pleasurable, in turns funny and dolorous,\u00a0Talk a Blue Streak\u00a0<\/em>examines how the act of writing declares a selfhood, but one that is always performative, looped, and curlicued.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018What do you get the wow of? What kind of beauty compels you to speak? How do we learn to notice it to one another? Lila Matsumoto roves across \u201ca movie set called America\u201d in search of wonder, finding it not in sunsets, monuments or institutions, but in supermarkets, house shows, video games and especially the crystalline fly-tipping suspended beneath a frozen pond \u2013 bootlegged, cut-price, bulk-bought, ultra-processed, ultra-perfect. She pursues \u201cthings before they harden into emblems\u201d, before they hang together in the usual ways. Talk a Blue Streak<\/em> is about girlhood, friendship and becoming yourself between registers and alongside someone else.\u2019 \u2014\u00a0Jennifer Hodgson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Talk A Blue Streak<\/em>: a perfect vision of writing as mise-en-sc\u00e8ne, where sites or stages or snapshots both synthetic and synthesising keep us asking \u2013 what is \u201creal life\u201d? In her continual shifts and rearrangements of objects that also keep time, Matsumoto\u2019s intense focus on the particularity of the world of things makes her one our great contemporary not-so-still life artists.\u2019 \u2014\u00a0Lucy Mercer<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Reading these poems and stories feels like studying one\u2019s reflection by the smears in a mirror or the hoar on a frozen lake; we can\u2019t see ourselves or comprehend our lives by looking directly, but by recollecting the weird trajectories of our effects, our wayward sequences. Reading the poems made me feel like I was having the best, funniest, most profound conversation with a friend, the two of us suspended in a dewdrop-kitchen as the world-party goes on around us. It made me feel like I love my funny friend, that this moment talking together is the distillation of all I could ask of life.\u2019 \u2014\u00a0Nisha Ramayya<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Talk A Blue Streak<\/em> is a captivating collection of prose poetry that pulses with vivid imagery and raw emotion. With lyrical precision, Lila Matsumoto captures fleeting moments and deep reflections, inviting readers into a world where the ordinary becomes extraordinary. A thought-provoking, soul-stirring read making the familiar feel new and the fleeting moments of life linger long after the final word.\u2019 \u2014\u00a0Peter Gizzi<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Talk a Blue Streak<\/em> is a deep rummage through Lila Matsumoto\u2019s memory box of acquired US cultural observation. Lila\u2019s elliptical, 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.\u2019\u2019 \u2014\u00a0Graham Lambkin<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Talk a Blue Streak<\/em>\u2019s speakers are beset by other people\u2019s language, sat in it, \u201cin the thrall\u201d of it. Living is a stream of audio interruptions writing cannot soothe; living, writing \u2013 swap those terms around. But even if we\u2019re subjected to administered language\u2019s \u201cgawky big marbles\u201d in the mouth, or struggling to reproduce the conditions for life, we can still look to objects \u2013 a sweet-pea\u2019s \u201cunfurled earlobe pink\u201d, \u201cglommed\u201d windshield bugs \u2013 and, coursing beneath artifice, there\u2019s a \u201cshambolic and candied jamboree\u201d constantly streaming from the headphones anyway: in Lila Matsumoto\u2019s poems it\u2019s this road-tripping DIY \u201cjangly lo-fi insurgency\u201d that I love the most.\u2019 \u2014\u00a0Tom Betteridge<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published by Monitor, publication date 21 May 2026 Pre-order book here 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\u2019s language and… Continue reading Home<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lilamatsumoto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lilamatsumoto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lilamatsumoto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lilamatsumoto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lilamatsumoto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/lilamatsumoto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209,"href":"https:\/\/lilamatsumoto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/53\/revisions\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lilamatsumoto.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}