PBS Special Commendation Summer 2021 Alice Hiller’s debut performs an act of witness and restitution. Working with her childhood and adolescent medical notes, bird of winter creates a redemptive language to speak the darkness of being sexually abused by a family member. Through the excavated histories of Pompeii and Herculaneum, these poems additionally document the grooming that prepares a child for sexual abuse, and the vulnerability which remains afterwards. Calling up the landscapes and relationships which sustained her, as well as the injury she experienced, Hiller reflects the nature and impact of a crime to which millions around the world are subjected – and asks how we may find our ways towards healing.
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your howl was buried under
metres of ash and pumice
DOG OF POMPEII
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(@LivUniPress, 1 May 2021, ebook, 87 pages, borrowed from @natpoetrylib via @OverDriveInc)
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This is a new port for me. One of the things I enjoy most about my National Poetry Library membership is coming across new poets to fall in love with and obsess over. I knew after reading a couple of lines that I was going to love Bird of Winter. At the heart of this collection are poems about surviving sexual abuse but many tackle this difficult subject through the lens of history and mythology drawing on the stories of Pompeii and Herculaneum. I loved every poem in this collection especially dog of Pompeii, the needle’s eye sews red silk and cyclical / wall painting house of the cecii.
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