Fiery, feminist and funny, Darling, It’s Me is the first collection by Norwich-based writer and academic Alison Winch. Winch combines refreshing explorations of marriage and motherhood with re-imaginings of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and rebuttals to the 'great' (male) philosophers of the Enlightenment. Fusing philosophical interrogation with humour and pop cultural resonances, Darling, It’s Me plots new ground for confessional poetry.
About the Author :
Alison Winch is a lecturer in Media Studies at the University of East Anglia. She is author of Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood (Palgrave, 2013) and co-editor of Encountering Buddhism in Twentieth-Century British and American Literature (Bloomsbury, 2013). Her debut pamphlet, Trouble, was published in 2016 by The Emma Press.
Review :
Alison Winch’s sustained attack on the ‘patriarchals’ — their literary canon, philosophy and institutions — is one of the cleverest, filthiest, most incendiary debuts I’ve ever read. Rimbaud deranged by morning sickness.
Clare Pollard
From the moment you enter the world of this book, where quym, trollop and coquillard share the pages with burpees, the 29 bus and egg tagliatelle, you’ll find yourself being tossed between apparent reality and nightmare hallucination. These precise and musical poems emerge in controlled bursts, reverberating up and down the centuries to create a soundscape of rage and furious imagination moderated by intellectual rigour. Think Anne Sexton coupled with Geoffrey Chaucer going heavy on the gas and air. A visceral, glorious and liberating attack on gender roles and the constraints of patriarchy.
Jacqueline Saphra
Winch's tools are tone, register, lexicon, and knowledge; she uses them powerfully. This is great work. The solidarity of the sisterhood is alive and it spans the centuries.
Katy Evans-Bush, Poetry London
Powerful and clever poems ... an utterly unique voice, witty, outrageous, and subversive.
Chris Cusack, Indierecs
Winch always rips the cosy fluff of literary convention from her material. Linguistic bravura bubbles up like an inexhaustibly subversive underground spring.
Carol Rumens, The Poetry Review
