‘…we speak Bone, and your own bones Explain us.’
A call from a group of bones found in a long-buried well in Norwich prompts Joanne Limburg to begin this exploration of the complex relationship between her ancestral past and her lived present. This takes her across time, from contemporary Britain back to the Europe of the Crusades and forward to the 1905 Aliens Act; across borders, from the birthplace of one grandmother in Ukraine to the other’s in Norwich, from the Pale of Settlement to the Port of Grimsby, and from Babylon to Bethnal Green. The scale of the enquiry is also constantly shifting, taking in both the microscopic barleytwists of a genome and the nightmarish cycles of history which have come to shape them.
Using the acrostic form of the Hebrew Book of Lamentations as a twenty-two-line template, Limburg brings her own voice into dialogue with two very different choruses, one made up of collaged lines taken from texts by gentiles on Jews, and the other imagined as the collective voice of the Bones, who understand that mourning should always come with self-examination, and that any given distance ‘must be measured before it can be felt.’.
Praise for Joanne Limburg's poetry:
‘Her unflinching honesty and compelling subject matter offer much to savour in this collection.’ – Suzannah V. Evans, Times Literary Supplement [on The Autistic Alice]
‘Joanne Limburg’s The Oxygen Man is an honest, difficult lurch through the aftermath of the suicide of her brother… This pamphlet expresses a “life goes on” sensibility alongside a grappling with true grief.’ – Rachael Allen, Poetry London
'This moving collection delves into the death of Limburg’s brother, then her own experience growing up with undiagnosed Asperger’s... The Autistic Alice is a touching insight into Limburg’s experiences of both grief and neurodivergence, and demonstrates the powerful way poetry can be used to explore those themes.' – Oxford Poetry Library (Book of the Week)
Ireland & EU: Click here to order from Books Upstairs in Dublin
USA: Click here to order from Indiebound or Bookshop.org
