bed

“bed takes us on a heart-wrenching journey through hospital admission and discharge, opening doors inward and outward as it explores the divides of self and space and asks: ‘where do I belong’? This astounding collection locates the ‘I’ in innovative form as much as in content: the ‘empty / stem’ of the ‘I’ is evoked in poems that run narrow – yet stand tall – on the page, stanzas re-assemble into ‘I’ shapes and, achingly, the ‘I’ is an ideogram for ‘a goodbye / hug’. Amid disappearances, erasures and elisions, bed is a collection that recovers the ‘I’ from an overwhelming ‘landscape of white static / white and muted’. These pages crackle with inventiveness; here is an electrifying new voice.” Sarah Barnsley

“I love bed most for its clarity and depth. Its language, imagery, use of form, and framing, are all wonderfully delicate. From its diminutive, lower-case title on, bed invites its readers straight inside to experience ‘a life pared down to a spoon’. These poems are like tiny islands – boats – beds – drifting and bumping on their sea – ward – of white space and grief. It’s stunningly generous, as these seemingly small pieces offer up huge insights, both compassionate and enlightening. They draw a self struggling to navigate a bruising landscape. This is work that is both refreshingly direct and beautifully crafted.” V. Press Guest Editor Charlotte Gann

bed is very raw and very real. 

ISBN: 978-1-7398838-4-3

36 pages

R.R.P. £6.50

Guest edited by Charlotte Gann

A sample extract from bed can be enjoyed below.

BED IS CURRENTLY OUT OF STOCK

A sample extract from bed:

I am walking into snow

a landscape of white static

white and muted

indeterminate

each forward step 

undoes
a part
of the child
I never completed

making me scream
that I need to turn back
and retrieve her

   (grieve her) 

Georgia Gildea talks with her V. Press guest editor, Charlotte Gann, about silence, self, resistance and more in her chapbook, bed (which addresses the experience of hospitalisation for anorexia), on The Understory Conversation here.

REVIEWS

“Days no longer have names, nor do colours. They are undifferentiated. The more I look at what is in these poems the more I start to see what’s missing.

I don’t know where better is

or whether I want
to go there

Illness has no timescale, no certainties other than the immediate present and shrunken surroundings. This is set up from the opening lines […]”

D A Prince, OPOI, Sphinx, full review here.