Name: Daughter of the Sun
SKU: 9781915628343
Price: 10.99 GBP
Availability: InStock

Daughter of the Sun

£10.99

“Spence takes the messy complexities of grief, love, mothers, daughters and myth and somehow manages to hold it all still – just long enough for us to get a good look. Utterly readable and gorgeously crafted – each poem has a wild beating heart and a steady hand.” – Ella Frears

Daughter of the Sun is a collection of poems by Rachel Spence. Cover by Emma Dai’an Wright.

‘Saltmarsh days, unwatered.

Struggling to find the poem in the morning,

the garden waking to the creak and clink

of shutters, my neighbour’s taut croon

to her toddler. Had forgotten how May

clogs Venice with the scent of jasmine

how a baby’s cry is more cat than human.

This time last year we didn’t know you had

just weeks to live. Sat in your garden

watching the hen pigeon plunge over

and over into your solarnum unless

her chicks were yelping out her absence.

John Cage found music in the dust of silence.

My sonnet in your body dissolving into blue.’

From the gentle rivers of Shropshire to the heat-baked seas of Greece, Daughter of the Sun radiates with mothers and tracks our orbits around them.

Split into two parts, a sonnet sequence recounts Spence’s time reconnecting with her estranged mother – caring for her through illness and grieving her passing – before a bold rewriting of the myths around Medea reimagines her not as a murderous witch but a child-free scientist ahead of her time.

With the power and salve of the natural world always close by, Daughter of the Sun contends with being a mother and a daughter, and also what it means to liberate ourselves of those identities and write our own myths full of freedom and possibility.

Page count: 80

Publication date: 13 Feb 2025

Paperback ISBN: 9781915628343

Rachel Spence

Rachel Spence lives in London, Ludlow and Venice. Her poems explore themes including time, absence, motherhood and water. She has published three pamphlets: 'Furies' (Templar, 2016), 'Call & Response' (Emma Press, 2020), and 'Uncalendared' (Coast to Coast to Coast Journal Winner, 2023). Her debut collection 'Bird of Sorrow' (Templar, 2018) was highly commended in the 2019 Forward Prize. Her prose poem 'Venice Unclocked', in collaboration with photographer Giacomo Cosua, was published by Ivory Press in 2022. Her poetry has appeared widely, including in PN Review, The North, The London Magazine, 14 magazine, Tears in the Fence, and on BBC's The Verb. Her non-fiction book 'Battle for the Museum', which explores the relationship between art, power and money, was published by Hurst in 2024.

Description

From the gentle rivers of Shropshire to the heat-baked seas of Greece, Daughter of the Sun radiates with mothers and tracks our orbits around them.

The book opens with a sonnet sequence on Spence’s time reconnecting with her estranged mother, caring for her through illness and grieving her passing. In a hard-edged but tender story of a relationship under multiple strains, these frank and open poems explore the strange ways that suffering can heal old wounds and the cruelty of closeness magnifying loss.

The book shifts in its second half, retelling the story of Medea – the “barbarian” who murders her own children – with a reimagining of the ultimate “unmother”. Positioning her subject as part-myth, part-witch and part-quantum physicist, this narrative expands and contracts time, and burns with remembrance, inheritance and feminist defiance.

Praise for Daughter of the Sun

‘An impressive and inspired collection, the language exquisite.’ ~ Yorkshire Life

‘Spence takes the messy complexities of grief, love, mothers, daughters and myth and somehow manages to hold it all still – just long enough for us to get a good look. Utterly readable and gorgeously crafted – each poem has a wild beating heart and a steady hand.’ ~ Ella Frears

‘Daughter of the Sun artfully explores time and the intimate life-giving relationships of women. […] A collection to enter, not to absorb but in which to allow yourself to be absorbed.’ ~ Maria Isakova-Bennett

‘Spence’s careful staging of an arduous, painful relationship is a poignant tribute.‘ ~ Dave Coates, Poetry Book Society

‘One of the most captivating depictions of a mother daughter relationship I have ever encountered… Spence is a poet unafraid of the big themes and embarks upon them with a real command of language. This book has great depth and is a refreshing take on feminist themes in the hands of a writer with superlative skill and empathy.’ ~ Pat Edwards, The High Window

‘Gorgeously wrought, emotionally resonant, and intellectually fearless […] Spence has given us a collection that speaks to what it means to live through loss, to care deeply, and to imagine — fiercely — another way to be.’ ~ Cassandra Fong, Redbrick