Glimmer & Ground journeys across and through various thresholds and between-spaces: the ecological, the mythological and the personal. These poems find queer love in landscapes, transforming subterranean caves into chapels and gardens into sanctuaries. Grounded in close observations of the earth, Ella Duffy’s first book-length collection uncovers stories inscribed deep within the physical aspects of the soil. Characters, new and familiar, appear and repeat throughout, and ‘the dead’ function as a kind of chorus, guiding and diverting the reader through the poems.
She has previously published three pamphlets, New Hunger, Rootstalk and Greencombe, and a fourth, Rock Paper Scissors with Adam Horovitz, as well as the botanical poetry anthology Seeds & Roots.
Praise for New Hunger:
‘Confident and bold poems, unafraid to tackle poetry’s big themes of nature or mythology, but always knowing to ground themselves in the body, or in an utterly precise and perfect image. Thrilling stuff.’ – Andrew McMillan
‘New Hunger is a vivid and intimate collection, one which explores a nascent queerness, new love, and tenderly draws its finest inspirations from the bounty of the natural world.’ – Mary Jean Chan
‘Ella Duffy’s New Hunger is a gorgeous pamphlet, bright with transformation, both in its rich and varied metaphor, and its physical metamorphoses. These are poems that also translate the world into kindness. If “loneliness is intimacy told backwards”, then these poems telegraph across the cold distances with empathy and love. Erotic, startling, grief-ridden but hopeful, you will find these poems “hooked […] under your heart”; this pamphlet offers a rich and rewarding imaginative world, and I cannot wait to read Ella Duffy’s first collection.’ – Fiona Benson
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