Description
‘Arms of other men’ is a contemplation of hauntings, of betrayal. It is an exploration into a woman’s body as a site of injury and of lingering memory, in a poetic form of resurrection but also of reclamation.
The cuttingly witty and fearless poems jostle the reader through the barbed process of reinvention in a breathless bombardment of phantom visions and memories that hemorrhage into the present day.
It questions the positioning of truth as clear liberation, and instead, presents a murky re-telling of what may or may not have been.
The question that lingers through these pages will haunt just as much as any spectre; ‘could you have been a better woman?’
““From start to finish, the poems in Arms of Other Men simply leap from the page and demand your attention, with their vivid imagery and intricate turns of phrase. Painful yet tender, raw yet refined, the pamphlet is a triumph of emotional honesty from a truly beautiful writer, and not one to be missed.” – Emily Rose Galvin, former Staffordshire Poet Laureate
I cannot look away from the pages. These poems slalom from vulgar hilarity to pained tenderness, uprooting any sense of stability; the female body has become a colourful threat and a locus of emotional harm, like a stingray at the bottom of a dirty canal, promising explosions. Moving, garishly sensual, giddily realised; these poems crash into you. Without a doubt, one of the best books I have read all year.” – Eoghan Walls, Author of Pigeon Songs & The Gospel of Orla.