It is a dangerous thing to be a
teenage girl.
I never kept a diary, except for
one year of my life. The year I turned fourteen. The year my parents divorced.
The year I had sex for the first time. The year I learned to use the
microfiche. In this unique follow-up to her memoir You Probably Think This Song Is About You, Kate Camp turns her poet's eye to the rollercoaster entries of her 1986 diary, when she was 13 going on 14.
Reading the entirety of its handwritten pages for
the first time, she revels in the 80s touchstones, from Revlon Custom Eyes
to Ghostbusters on VHS. But amid the daily details like
smoking menthols in Suzy's Coffee Lounge and wearing Jazzercise tights in a
phone box are moments of drama, even tragedy - being black-out drunk in a spa
pool, or watching her father move out of the family home. And at the centre of
it all is Cameron, his black hair falling over his eyes, intoning in his fake
Scottish accent, 'Treat me rough, baby.'
The diary
entries - over 100 reproduced in full - are a time capsule of a very different
era. The Kate Camp of today responds to their blithe accounts of sex, drugs and
risk-taking with horror and admiration. How real are our memories? Can we ever
know ourselves? And why is every entry signed off Leather and Chains?
About the Author :
Kate Camp is the author of the memoir You
Probably Think This Song Is About You and eight acclaimed collections of
poems, including The Mirror of Simple Annihilated Souls (winner of the 2011
NZ Post Book Award for Poetry), How to Be Happy Though Human: New and
Selected Poems and Makeshift Seasons. Kate was born in 1972 and
lives in Wellington.
Review :
'Kate Camp reads the words of
grownupchild Kate of 1986 - achingly funny, arch and louche, often
shocking, always clever. And all of it threaded through with such pain
and sadness and unsettling darkness, such yearning to be loved. I
thought I knew The Diary so well, after all these years listening and
watching from the wings. But reading The Diary myself, as she does in
this remarkable project, is richer, funnier and, yes, sadder than
experiencing it live in eight-minute snippets. I've often wondered about
Kate Camp: how did she get to be so fearless, so peerless, so bold? The
answer is in these pages.' -Tracy Farr, author of Wonderland and convenor of the Bad Diaries Salon
'An irresistible blend of
darkness and light.' -Catherine Chidgey,
author of The Book of Guilt and Pet
'IF YOU EVER
GET TO SEE KATE CAMP READ FROM HER 14YO DIARY DO IT FUCKING DO IT.' -Melody
Thomas, host of the The Good Sex Project
