Home Front: Bulletproof * Stateside * Clamor * Atmospherics - Softcover

Bryony Doran; Jehanne Dubrow; Elyse Fenton; Isabel Palmer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1780373260 ISBN 13: 9781780373263

Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2016

Synopsis

Even in peacetime, many women find themselves isolated in a wartime of their own when their loved ones are involved in conflicts overseas. As mothers or wives they live in a state of separation, from husbands, sons or daughters in permanent danger - or so they feel - as well as from an often alienating everyday world of people who have no idea of what anxieties and fears grip them every minute. They also find themselves switching back and forth between two time zones, between the present moment and what might have been happening several hours ago in the Middle East.

Home Front presents the poetry of four such women, Bryony Doran and Isabel Palmer, both mothers of young British soldiers serving in Afghanistan; and two American poets, Jehanne Dubrow, wife of a serving US naval officer deployed to the Persian Gulf and other conflict zones, and Elyse Fenton, wife of a US army medic posted to Iraq. It brings together four full-length collections by these writers; those by the two British poets are debut collections first published in full in this book.

The poems in Bryony Doran's Bulletproof tell a chronological story, from her son's unexpected decision to join the army through his tours in and returns from Afghanistan. Covering every emotion from fear to fury, yet lifted by humour and details of everyday domestic life, these are poems written to preserve a pacifist mother's sanity as each day plays itself out.

The narrative in Isabel Palmer's Atmospherics begins with seeing her only son go to war in Afghanistan soon after his 21st birthday in 2011 and ends with his final, safe return. His role there was to lead foot patrols and to operate machines for detecting improvised explosive devices. While he was on tour, she wrote one poem every week reflecting on their experiences. The earlier poems appeared in Ground Signs (Flarestack Poets, 2014), a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice.

Driven by intellectual curiosity and emotional exploration, the poems in Jehanne Dubrow's Stateside (2010) are remarkable for their subtlety, sensual imagery and technical control. The speaker attempts to understand her own life through the long history of military wives left to wait and wonder, invoking Penelope's plight in Homer's Odyssey as a model but also as a source of mystery. Dubrow is fearless in her contemplation of the far-reaching effects of war but even more so in her excavation of a marriage under duress.

At times quiet, at others cacophonous, the poems of Elyse Fenton's Clamor turn a lyric lens on the language we use to talk about war and atrocity, and the irreconcilable rifts - between lover and beloved, word and thing - such work unearths. Originally published in the US - but not in the UK - in 2010, Clamor was the first book of poetry to win Britain's Dylan Thomas Prize.

About this title

Review:

These days we are used to the televised grief of combatants, civilians and refugees. But the experiences of the families left behind are rarely heard. Home Front is an inspired idea and an important book, written by four women... It's four books in one, a collection of painful farewells, phone-calls and photographs, letters and longing, despair, denial and desperation. --Andy Croft, Morning Star

The new voices in this quadruple collection are powerful, unusual and varied. They have so many stories to tell, and they are calling for listeners. --Katie Mennis, Cherwell

The cumulative effect of reading these collections back to back is sobering. Rooted in the varied domestic environments of the home front, they echo and respond to each other making individual experiences into collective rage, confusion, fear, patience, hope and love. These are not niche poems; they are written from the perspective of a range of women each caught up in war by association, which, in a way, we all are in these turbulent times. Home Front is a book to be read by all who value what is good in humanity in the face of what is bad. --Maria Apichella, The Poetry School Blog

About the Author:

Bryony Doran's first novel, The China Bird, won the Hookline novel competition in 2008 and was published in 2009, and followed in 2013 by her short story collection, The Sand Eggs. She has written and performed poetry for many years and completed an MA in Writing at Sheffield Hallam University. Born in a youth hostel on Dartmoor, she grew up in Cornwall and studied fashion at Manchester before moving to Yorkshire. She lives in Sheffield with her partner Bill Allerton, who is also a writer, and has one son.

Jehanne Dubrow is the author of five poetry collections, including most recently The Arranged Marriage (University of New Mexico Press, 2015), Red Army Red (Northwestern, 2012) and Stateside (Northwestern, 2010). Her second book, From the Fever-World, won the Washington Writers' Poetry Competition (2009), and her first, The Hardship Post (2009), won the Three Candles Press Open Book Award and was recently re-released in a new edition by Sundress Publications (2013). She co-edited The Book of Scented Things: 100 Contemporary Poems About Perfume (Literary House Press, 2014). She has received the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Towson University Prize for Literature, an Individual Artist's Award from the Maryland State Arts Council, fellowships from the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and a Sosland Foundation Fellowship from the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies. The daughter of American diplomats, Jehanne was born in Italy and grew up in Yugoslavia, Zaire, Poland, Belgium, Austria, and the United States. She is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of North Texas. She also serves as the Series Editor of the Literary House Press and is the founder and editor of the literary journal Cherry Tree.

Elyse Fenton is the author of the poetry collections, Clamor (Cleveland University Press), winner of the 2010 University of Wales Dylan Thomas Prize and Sweet Insurgent (Saturnalia 2017). She is the recipient of the Alice Fay di Castagnola Prize, the Cleveland State University First Book Award, the Pablo Neruda Award and the Bob Bush Memorial Award, and was selected a New American Poet by the Poetry Society of America. She has worked in the woods, on farms and in schools in Texas, New England, Mongolia, and the Pacific Northwest, and lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.

Isabel Palmer is a freelance writer and a former English teacher and educational adviser. She lives in Swindon. Her pamphlet, Ground Signs (Flarestack Poets, 2014), was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice. In 2015 she read some of the poems on Radio 4's The World at One with Martha Kearney, and had a residency at Marlborough College. Her father and her son both served in the same regiment, the King's Shropshire Light Infantry (later the Rifles).

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1780373260
• ISBN 13: 9781780373263
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256