Description
Book SynopsisZoë Brigley’s third collection Hand & Skull draws on early memories of the Welsh landscape and the harshness of rural life as well as on her later immersion in the American landscape and her perception of a sense of hollowness in particular communities there. Other strands include the horror of violence, especially violence towards women, contrasted with poems which offer comfort by working as beatitudes or commentaries on life as it exists now, seeking a way of being that is more beautiful, often in relation to her children. There are also epistolary poems, letters to or from real, imagined and remembered women like the artist Georgia O’Keeffe, Thomas Hardy’s Tess, and Edna Pontellier from Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
Trade ReviewHand & Skull examines the complex relationships between human and nonhuman lives as well as the ways in which gender informs these experiences. Brigley regularly uses epistolaries to establish dialogues, often addressing or personifying women of myth, literature, and history, such as Leda, Edna Pontellier, and Georgia O’Keeffe. Gender violence and violence against animals are often central concerns, but what makes the collection particularly compelling is its refusal to let tragedy be the only note it sings; many of the poems also embrace the complicated wonders of motherhood, of devotion. Hand & Skull dazzled me with its agility and subtlety, its graceful inquiry into how gender, violence, myth, devotion and the natural world braid through our lives.’ -- Amie Whittemore
With Conquest, her fascinating second collection, the Welsh-born poet Zoë Brigley explores women's desires, dream and loves… Brigley deepens her expressive range as she explores diverse worlds and a shifting female cast... Via historical and mythic approaches, she highlights the vastness and intensity of women's desire, as well as the delicacy... The formal variety of Conquest serves Zoë Brigley's imaginative quest well, and includes, for instance, the prose poem, the list poem, and a variation on the double sestina. Yet the collection is without ostentation, and poems such as "The Love of a Husband" ("Because he never, ever hesitated./ Because when she shuts a window, he opens a door.") and the intricate "The Blue Rose", in memory of her English grandfather, are as heartfelt as they are beautifully judged. -- Moniza Alvi * PBS Bulletin *
Exploring sexuality and politics with imaginative subtlety, Conquest is a book about pursuit and capture and the things that elude us in the chase… What seems to interest Brigley most about pursuit is what is evaded in the chase. Her poems are full of references to the lost and the untouchable… This is a beautifully disconcerting collection, intelligent in its treatment of its themes. -- Helen Mort * Magma *
Table of Contents9 Alfred Stieglitz: Georgia O’Keeffe, Hands and Horse Skull 11 Blind Horse Elegy 13 Poem for Emily Doe 14 Undressing Poem 15 Letter from Georgia O’Keeffe 16 Poem on the Edge 17 Letter from a Sheep Skull 18 Dryad 19 Dressing Poem 20 Sonnet for the Hole in the Glass 21 Letter from Tess Durbeyfield 22 Forgetting Poem 25 Victoria Brookland: Horse 27 Letter to a Horse’s Head 28 Poem with a Least Favourite Dress 29 Revolver 30 Western Union 31 Poem with a Whalebone Crinoline 32 The Eye in the Wall 33 The Shave 34 Hand & Breast 35 Post Colonial 36 Beatitudes for the Women 38 Poem with Seams 39 Victoria Brookland: Vésuviennes 40 Letter to Leda on Getting Married 41 Poem with a Wedding Dress 42 Swan 43 Rare 44 Syringe 45 Round Trip 46 White Patio with a Red Door 47 Vésuviennes 48 Poem with a High Waist 49 The Amish Roofers 50 Poem with Stockings and Suspenders 51 Victoria Brookland: I too am a rare pattern 53 Letter from Edna Pontellier 54 Star / Sun / Snow 56 Eagle Poem 57 Name Poem 58 Poem with a Mourning Dress 59 Letter from Nemi 61 Beatitude for the Meek 62 He Has a John Clare Chin 63 Tree with Cut Limb 64 My Last Beatitude 65 Hand & Skull 69 Notes 70 Acknowledgements 71 Thanks
