Girlhood

Review 'Julia Copus's poems are acts of resistance. The material tests its own boundaries to become something new. She is not limited to - or by - personal experience. One of the many pleasures of this phenomenal collection, her first for seven years, is that you cannot predict the varied ways in which these poems will fly.' ― The Observer Product Description WINNER OF THE DEREK WALCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRYJulia Copus's new collection, Girlhood, is a book of transgressed boundaries and seductive veneers. Restlessly inquisitive, it exposes the shifting power balance between things on the verge of becoming and the forces that threaten to destroy them. Reading these poems, we have the sense of encountering a series of filmic installations arranged by episode in a gallery. Lost, censored or disparaged voices speak out from secluded spaces and moments of hidden history: from within a professor's office and a deserted department store; from kitchens, bedrooms, hallways and upstairs windows; through changing weathers, fidgety shadows and the witching hour.Girlhood concludes with a sequence set in a psychiatric hospital that reimagines Jacques Lacan's treatment of his most famous case study, Marguerite Pantaine. This dramatic meeting of minds has us questioning who is the more delusional - doctor or patient: like other victims in this exhilarating new collection, Marguerite may initially appear vanquished, but a closer look reveals how little of herself she has really surrendered. Book Description Deft and seductive new collection of poems from T. S. Eliot Prize and Costa Poetry Award shortlisted poet About the Author Julia Copus was born in London and now lives in Somerset. She has won First Prize in the National Poetry Competition and the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (2010). She also writes for radio; her first play, Eenie Meenie Macka Racka, was awarded the BBC's Alfred Bradley prize. She is a Lector for the Royal Literary Fund, and in 2008 was made an Honorary Fellow at the University of Exeter. She wrote the Harry and Lil series of picture books.