£10.00
In this remarkable debut collection, Jen Dunn explores what it is to be as a child, a lover, a surgeon and a psychiatrist. Her precise, lyric poetry examines ‘the pulse bright moments of life’ that happen in the midst of death, trauma and enduring. She writes movingly of her father’s death – ‘hot tears pulled from bolted seams’ and pays tribute to a medical colleague – ‘the cold precision of the job only ever warm with you’.
Much of this collection is an interrogation of self, and of the push and pull of her medical background – ‘do I step back or step into your grief?’ This powerful collection makes the ordinary extraordinary in poems that touch on everyday situations – ‘Smokers Outside the Hospital’ as well as those only experienced by the poet herself. Here are patients, friends, colleagues, family, selkies and fellow commuters in the hurly-burly of what it is to be alive ‘and we grow into our rings, the trees and I’.
(Lynn Valentine, poet)
Available end of Feb 2025
