‘Through which openings does someone enter when they control the life of another? How do you push that harm back out, and first reclaim, then love, your own attacked self? Beautiful, poised, and unflinching, Matches tracks one woman’s encounter with domestic abuse and violence. Written with “the sharp end of a question mark”, it also records the path she created to free herself from a world where every move is set up to be the wrong one. A light out of darkness for many, and a place of learning for all of us, these are poems to honour and cherish.’ – Alice Hiller
‘Poetic language, at its best, makes the strange familiar, the familiar strange. These poems go further by giving language to estrangement. Gander makes a devastating articulation of the violence done to women who see themselves solely and cruelly through the eyes of another. The daily losses of power in a clarity that is astonishingly brave, of which we almost never speak—the unspeakable remittance of selfhood that women suffer. What these poems make possible is the rarest chance for healing; I feel changed, alive, compelled by her courage.’ – Sandeep Parmar
Matches - Catherine Gander
Price £8.50
ISBN: 9781913917456
Pub Date: 8th Feb 2024
Format: Paperback
Extent: 36 pp
POETRY pamphlet