Böcker av Zoe Brigley

Family Name features three unique poets - Jenny Mitchell, Roy McFarlane, and Zoë Brigley - who consider the act of naming, alongside explorations of family, whether biologically linked or chosen. They also question how names are twisted and debased to dehumanise in domestic and historical settings. Mitchell conjures the experiences of mothers, grandmothers and foremothers who practise an inherent alchemy to recover power and autonomy, especially in relation to the body. She examines how identity may be stolen, but can also be hard-won. McFarlane returns to forebears dedicating poems to Chet Baker, Sylvia Plath, the men of the Ellesmere Canal Yard, and, in the moving 'Haibun for The Fields', to Ishmael Zechariah McFarlane ("my life father"). McFarlane also tackles language, place and conquest, as in 'Call me by my name' where a hurricane refuses the Briticised monikers (Charlie, Gilbert, Dean) allotted it. Brigley's poems explore Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797): her life, her family and the background that created this pioneering feminist. Wollstonecraft is so much more than suggested by Horace Walpole's callous naming of her as a "hyena in petticoats". Family Name offers a call to arms, a refusal to accept injustice and a determination to reclaim identity as a site of power.

This pamphlet features new translations of Medieval Welsh poet, Gwerful Mechain, renowned for her proto-feminist and erotic poetry. Altogether, the translations and original poems channel Gwerful's audacious spirit. They question why in the twenty-first century, women are still policed and discouraged in talking about sex, desire, and the body. They ask what might happen if women were set free.

These creative nonfiction essays consider girlhood, motherhood, violence at home and abroad, violence against women, the consolation in writing, trauma, and redemption.The essays celebrate and interrogate popular and literary culture: for example the film Breakfast at Tiffany's, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Alun Lewis's love letters, and David Bowie's 'Life on Mars'.These timely meditations on women, ethics, and writing bring insights that only an immigrant and traveller like Brigley could provide.

A book of mystery and magic, retelling stories from the Bible, Celtic mythology, small-town rumours and urban mythologies. It then gradually moves beyond its borders to narratives of Central America, drawing on figures such as the Spanish conquistador, Hernan Cortes, and the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo.

Poetry Book Society Recommendation: second collection by Welsh poet whose debut Bloodaxe collection "The Secret" was also a PBS Recommendation.