[••• ••• •••••• •• ••••••] charts the estrangement between a daughter and her brilliant, charismatic and often terrifying father. With nuance and precision, these poems bear witness to a childhood shaped by fear, love, music and violence – where admiration and foreboding uneasily coexist. Drawing on the language of Eastern European fairytales, folk music, chess and meteorology, [•••••• •••••••]’s sequence explores the mythic and monstrous dimensions of paternal absence. The observing moon, recurring throughout, becomes a quiet symbol of grief and longing, bridging distance with light. Through a textured blend of anecdotal and compressed lyric poems, her sequence captures the reverberations of trauma and tenderness alike. At once intimate and archetypal, [••• ••• •••••• •• ••••••] confronts the deep complexities of the father-daughter bond – its beauty, its terror, and its lasting weather.

[•••••• •••••••]’s [••• ••• •••••• •• ••••••]  is the winner of the 2024 Mslexia Women’s Poetry Pamphlet Competition judged by Imtiaz Dharker. The name of author and the title and other details of her pamphlet will be revealed shortly when the winner is announced in the June 2025 issue of Mslexia. 

‘[•••••• •••••••] crafts a set of poems heavy with storm warnings, stalked by the presence of the father who carries a burden of rage passed down generations, ‘a man cut in half by history’… Through the ever-narrowing landscape of the man she knows, she contrives to suggest, with great skill and delicacy, not only a daughter’s pain and struggle to comprehend, but a whole nation’s turbulent history.’ – Imtiaz Dharker

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