My Body is a Stranger

 

“Nikki Dudley never fails to deliver. In My Body is a Stranger, she sheds light on women and society, and women in society, in a collection that deftly blends personal and universal. These poems are deeply moving and beautifully arranged and ultimately – in a world that so desperately needs it – hopeful.”

Laura Besley

“In My Body is a Stranger, Nikki Dudley writes with raw honesty, wit and tenderness about perimenopause and its ill-gotten, unwanted bedfellows: sleeplessness, anxiety, rage, memory loss, and medical dismissal. She leads the reader on a journey from discovery to acceptance, brilliantly capturing the shock of feeling alien inside one’s own body.

“This is a fierce and compassionate collection of poems, one that explores women’s health, societal experience and survival. It is both an intimate opening of the door to individual pain, grief and confusion, as well as a collective, rallying cry for understanding, solidarity, and, ultimately, resilience.”

JP Seabright

My Body is a Stranger is very visceral and very hopeful.

ISBN: 978-1-0682701-7-8

36 pages

R.R.P. £7.50

A sample poem may be enjoyed below.

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My Body is a Stranger (with p&p options)

My Body is a Stranger (with p&p for UK only delivery) £9.49 GBP My Body is a Stranger with p&p for non-EU Rest of World delivery £23.50 GBP

N.B. We can no longer sell to the EU. Any other international customs/duty charges are the buyer's responsibility.  

Not time to wake up

You are an unanswerable question

when you go to the doctors now to ask

why you wake up at 3am and stare

into nothing, unable to drift off,

heart pounding.

Are you dying?

Do you have a disease?

Or are you just a woman?

You meet others outside the school gates,

drawn together like animals sniffing out a prize

but the prize is a mirage 

or a shard of glass that connects

but ever so slightly warps.

We are together in dark rooms, shining

torches, meeting in the middle and straying,

without focus.

Someone whispers something 

about hormones and we latch on, 

hungry to discover the truth

of forgotten words in conversations, sudden

dejection that mushrooms across 

daylight, and

the fears that nestle 

into the creases

of darkness, at 3am, 

when your fingers 

stretch across the quiet city, 

across the bed even,

and no one answers.