How to Live

By Helen Rickerby

A new poetry collection that takes readers among &#39;the unsilent women&#39;, from Hipparchia to J. K. Rowling.&#39;Women who speak have always been monstrous. That twisty sphinx, those tempting sirens; better plug your ears with wax, boys.&#39;Where are the female philosophers? Why are women silenced? Who can tell us how to live? In her fourth collection of poetry, Helen Rickerby takes readers on a journey into women&#39;s writing, a quest for philosophical answers, and an investigation of poetic form.The poems in How to Live engage in a conversation with &#39;the unsilent women&#39; - Hipparchia and George Eliot, Ban Zhao and Mary Shelley. They do so in order to explore philosophical and practical questions: how one could or should live a good life, how to be happy, how to not die, how to live. Rickerby thinks through the ways that poetry can build up and deconstruct a life, how the subtext and layers inherent in poetry can add to the telling of a life story, and how different perspectives can be incorporated into one work - the place where poetry meets essay, where fiction meets non-fiction, where biography meets autobiography, where plain-speaking meets lyricism, where form pushes against digression.The work is witty (&#39;Perhaps I should ban &quot;perhaps&quot;.&#39;) and self-reflexive (&#39;Am I afraid that if I let the words leak out, they&#39;ll mix with oxygen and become prose?&#39;) as Rickerby draws on the intensity, symbolism and layering of poetic form, using poetry as a space of exploration of ideas, of thinking, of essaying.

A new poetry collection that takes readers among 'the unsilent women', from Hipparchia to J. K. Rowling.'Women who speak have always been monstrous. That twisty sphinx, those tempting sirens; better plug your ears with wax, boys.'Where are the female philosophers? Why are women

By Helen Rickerby

Recommended Titles

Additional Details

Author Biography

Welcome to Wheelers!