Talk A Blue Streak

by Lila Matsumoto

Monitor Books

Paperback, 2026

104 pages

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.

‘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 elliptical, humorous text takes the uncanny and absurd virtu 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 like I love my funny friend, that this moment talking together is the distillation of all I could ask of life.’ — Nisha Ramayya