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Blood and Cord: Writers on Early Parenthood

Blood and Cord: Writers on Early Parenthood

£5.99£11.99

Blood & Cord is a raw exploration of new parenthood. Voicing silenced conversations about loss, grief, and loneliness, as well as the joys and laughter that are part and parcel of becoming a parent, the stories told within offer a refreshingly honest account of life after new life.

 

Becoming a parent can be a kind of un-making of the self. You lose your old life in many ways, both physically and emotionally. From the intensity of birth, to the strange hinterlands of sleepless nights, from the pain of baby loss, to the ferocity of love, to the sensation of having allowed a being into your world who will change it forever.’

 

This collection is a hand in the dark, offering comfort and solidarity to any new parent.

 

Edited by Abi Curtis, with prose pieces from Naomi Booth, Jennifer Cooke, Rebecca Goss, Daisy Hildyard, Caleb Klaces and Malcolm Taylor, and poems from Liz Berry, Rachel Bower, Tommy Brad, Janine Bradbury, Ruth Charnock, Abi Curtis, Paige Davis, Gail McConnell, Elizabeth Hogarth, Alex McRae Dimsdale, Sandra Simonds and Sylvie Simonds.

 

 

 

Page count: 144pp

Publication date: 18 May 2023

Paperback ISBN: 9781915628152

 

Stock allowing, your package will include our latest risoprint zine, ‘The Emma Press Post’, which features poems and illustrations from the titles our catalogue, plus original drawings.

 

Watch the online book launch on our YouTube channel, featuring the editor and seven contributors reading from their work.

GTIN: 9781915628152 SKU: 9781915628152-1 Categories: , , , , , Tag:

Abi Curtis

Abi Curtis is Professor of Creative Writing at York St John University. She has won an Eric Gregory Award and Somerset Maugham Award for her poetry collections, Unexpected Weather (Salt, 2009) and The Glass Delusion (Salt, 2013). She has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing and is inspired by art, psychology, science and the environment. She has written on such subjects as mushrooms in Freud, the uncanny, elegy, squid in literature, and pollination and enjoys collaborations with artists, musicians and scientists. Her first novel, Water & Glass, a speculative climate-change fiction was published by Cloud Lodge Books in 2017 . In 2022 Abi’s short fiction was commended in the Bridport, Fish and Alpine Fellowship Prizes, and a poetic sequence on the subject of a medieval anchoress, set to music by David Lancaster, was performed by the Ex Corde Vocal Ensemble. After having children, Abi developed a particular interest in the relationship between creativity and parenthood. She lives in York with her husband and two sons.

Description

A child is born and everything is made anew. In this blur of new beginnings there are tears and laughter, new words and new silences: this is an unmaking and remaking of the self.

From short stories about unnerved fathers and lost mothers, to poems about ‘half-built Lego palaces’ and friends who share their deepest secrets, Blood & Cord is a raw exploration of new parenthood. Voicing silenced conversations about loss, grief, and loneliness, as well as the joys and laughter that are part and parcel of becoming a parent, the stories told within offer a refreshingly honest account of life after new life.

This collection is a hand in the dark, offering comfort and solidarity to any new parent.

Edited by Abi Curtis, with prose pieces from Naomi Booth, Jennifer Cooke, Rebecca Goss, Daisy Hildyard, Caleb Klaces and Malcolm Taylor, and poems from Liz Berry, Rachel Bower, Tommy Brad, Janine Bradbury, Ruth Charnock, Abi Curtis, Paige Davis, Gail McConnell, Elizabeth Hogarth, Alex McRae Dimsdale, Sandra Simonds and Sylvie Simonds.

Praise for Blood and Cord

‘Many kinds of parenthood are presented in this superb new collection of poems and stories. Mothers and fathers convey the spectrum of ways in which the self is remade by parenthood, the ‘complete subjugation’ of this task – bodily, mentally, spiritually – tearing apart the boundaries of love for which new language is required. Thankfully, the writers herein are more than up to this otherwise monumental task. New and experienced parents alike will find solace and resonance in this wonderful book.Carolyn Jess-Cooke

‘Blood and Cord brings a multiplicity of voices together to explore and celebrate the diverse experiences of parenthood. From the raw bodily sensations of baby rearing to the immanence of beauty in the everyday, this anthology captures it all.’ – Rym Kechcha for Lucy

‘It’s rare to find an anthology where every writer represented repays the effort of reading; this is one.’ -Billy Mills, Elliptical Movements

Author

  • Abi Curtis

    Abi Curtis is Professor of Creative Writing at York St John University. She has won an Eric Gregory Award and Somerset Maugham Award for her poetry collections, Unexpected Weather (Salt, 2009) and The Glass Delusion (Salt, 2013). She has a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing and is inspired by art, psychology, science and the environment. She has written on such subjects as mushrooms in Freud, the uncanny, elegy, squid in literature, and pollination and enjoys collaborations with artists, musicians and scientists. Her first novel, Water & Glass, a speculative climate-change fiction was published by Cloud Lodge Books in 2017 . In 2022 Abi’s short fiction was commended in the Bridport, Fish and Alpine Fellowship Prizes, and a poetic sequence on the subject of a medieval anchoress, set to music by David Lancaster, was performed by the Ex Corde Vocal Ensemble. After having children, Abi developed a particular interest in the relationship between creativity and parenthood. She lives in York with her husband and two sons.

Additional information

Dimensions 21.0 × 1 × 14.8 cm
Format

Paperback, eBook

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