Climacteric
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Fly on the Wall Press
Published:16th Sep '22
Should be back in stock very soon
Climacteric noun
1. a critical period or event. "the first major climacteric in twenty-first-century poetry"
2. MEDICINE the period of life when fertility is in decline; (in women) menopause. "most women do not experience significant psychological problems at the climacteric"
"our hair is coming out in clumps; we are sweeping it from corners, from beneath the bed, gathering it into our sleepless nest"
How can we love ourselves at the climacteric of our lives; of the planet? Jo Bratten's debut poetry chapbook bubbles with anger and guilt at the failures of both spirit and body and a coming to terms with loss, for the natural passing of loved ones, and the unnatural passing of our planet's ecosystems. These poems offer solace: you are not alone - "In the fractured dark we're all doomscrolling/before dawn, lit up like Caravaggios." They offer the simplest kind of love: the joy that can be found within nature.
“I loved these poems. Jo Bratten’s work has a dark, foreboding quality but it’s also inventive, sensual, and caustic, with bags of attitude and fresh language. Highly recommended.” - Luke Wright
-- Luke WrightClimacteric, Jo Bratten’s début pamphlet from Fly on the Wall Press, is a proper poet’s collection. What I mean by that is – it’s highly literary, liberally peppered with couplets, tercets and sonnets, freely referencing of nineteenth century poets such as Gerard Manley Hopkins and William Wordsworth, and also shadows Wordsworth in many of his poetic preoccupations: think union with nature, childhood, water and wandering (Bratten is an American resident in the UK). Differences? Of course: those of context and of time. Bratten is writing from the dizzying double summit of a woman approaching the middle-age and the tipping point in human relations with nature. - Here Comes Everyone
"Climacteric absolutely feels like Bratten’s version of the cats of ‘Solstice’, she’s testing the edges of herself here. This book is “waiting for you”." - The Friday Poem
ISBN: 9781913211844
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 47g
36 pages