A Ticket to Trilce

"I wrote A Ticket to Trilce almost 15 years ago and have not until now considered sending it to a publisher: Sometime is the right time. This does not mean that it will be published now but simply that I feel it's a good moment for it to have a go. The book was completed in several days - my poor memory asks me now if I 'bedwritten' with a flu? - and was penned in response to reading a number of different translations of Vallejo's Trilce, including one by a friend and fellow poet, Peter Boyle. I love Vallejo's work, not just Trilce, but Trilce seemed to be asking me to respond, to converse, to talk. (Another work that had a similar effect on me was Neruda's Book of Questions in reply to which I wrote Talking to Neruda's Questions - published in Australia in 2001 and later translated into Italian and Spanish and published in Italy and Chile respectively.) The numbered pieces in Ticket follow the same in Vallejo's work and line-count, formatting, layout and 'mood' also seek the same ground. My book does, however, unfold very much in its own space and is by no means an attempt at 'comment' on the piece that inspired it.

What would I say about the book I have written: it is guttural, visceral, intuitive (perhaps more so 'intuited'); it is quick, urgent and unapologetic. It is also a rational argument put nonsensically and thus a challenge to both the intelligence and the emotions. Its 'own cry', it therefore belongs to all who cry out - every truly owned utterance is owned by all. And it is kind of personal and because of this it doesn't need a reader. More than anything such a claim means it should be read. What is says does truly exist. I believe."-MTC Cronin





"Much of Cronin's play with Vallejo's 1922 experimental sequence originates in the gender difference between herself and Vallejo and the humour to be found in male-centred assumptions. A Ticket to Trilce provides admission to a private female stocktake of an early 20th Century classic in a contemporary setting. A lover of Vallejo herself, Cronin provides us with a passport to another version of his great vision." -Peter Boyle