Into Eros

Into Eros is about recovery after sexual violence. Anne Carson's assertion that Eros is "the biggest risk of your life" takes on a new meaning within legacies of trauma, and on a quest to rediscover desire and healing. This chapbook might help survivors, by offering a complex view of life after violence which includes both difficulty and joy.

"Brigley bravely confronts what it is to be a woman in a world that sees women as prey" - Maggie Smith, author of Goldenrod & Good Bones

Auteur

Zoë Brigley is the author of three books of poetry published by Bloodaxe: Hand & Skull (2019), Conquest (2012), and The Secret (2007). All three are UK Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She also has a collection of nonfiction essays: Notes from a Swing State: Writing from Wales and America (Parthian, 2019). Her writing appears in Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Review, The Chicago Review, Australian Book Review, PN Review, Women's Studies Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere. She also researches literature, film, trauma, and violence against women and minorities. She co-edited the academic volume Feminism, Literature, and Rape Narratives (with Sorcha Gunne). Her research articles appear in The Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Formations, Feminist Media Studies, Gender and Education, and Contemporary Women's Writing. She podcasts on anti-violence advocacy issues at SinisterMyth.com . She won an Eric Gregory Award for the best British poets under 30, and she was listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize for the best international writers under 35. A native of Wales, she now lives in Ohio, where she works as an Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University. She is a contributing editor and committee member for Wales' leading poetry journal, Poetry Wales.

Texte du rabat

The poems in Into Eros consider the dangers for women in risking desire, and they tell a story about nature, trauma, and healing. Here, pumpkin flowers, poison sumac, and apple blossoms are as much persons as women are, and their experience are parallel but different. These poems register the value of love after violence. Not possessing or dominating but dwelling with people, with nature - this at last might lead to freedom, and joy.