Violence hangs over this book like an electric storm. Beginning with a poem about the teenage dawning of sexuality, Vertigo & Ghost pitches quickly into a long sequence of graphic, stunning pieces about Zeus as a serial rapist, for whom woman are prey and sex is weaponised. These are frank, brilliant, devastating poems of vulnerability and rage, and as Zeus is confronted with aggressions both personal and historical, his house comes crumbling down. A disturbing contemporary world is exposed, in which violent acts against women continue to be perpetrated on a daily - hourly - basis.
The book shifts, in its second half, to an intimate and lyrical document of depression and family life. It sounds out the complex and ambivalent terrain of early motherhood - its anxieties and claustrophobia's as well as its gifts of tenderness and love - reclaiming the sanctuary of domestic private life, and the right to raise children in peace and safety.
Vertigo & Ghost is an important, necessary book, hugely impressive in its range and risk, and dramatic in its currency: a collection that speaks out with clarity, grace and bravery against the abuse of power.
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That was the summer hormones poured into me like an incredible chemical cocktail into a tall iced glass ACE OF BASS
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(@vintagebooks, 3 January 2019, ebook, 112 pages, borrowed from @natpoetrylib via @OverDriveLibs)
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The first half of this collection is incredible, bold and quite brilliant. I loved every poem. I loved the concept, Zeus as a serial rapist with stark, dark and amazing poems from his POV and some from his many victims. These are poems about sexual violence, victimisation and male dominance and I found them stunning. This section alone makes Vertigo & Ghost worth a read. The best poems are days I talked with Zeus, Rape is rarely what you think, He tracked me down, Danae and Medusa 1, 2 & 3. The collection is let down by the second half which couldn't be more different with poems about more general poems. The poems are well written but not a patch on the opening poems which should have been published on their own.
