Overview
The title of Vicki Feaver's remarkable new collection derives from Blake's illustration of a child standing with one foot on a ladder to the moon, crying 'I want I want ' In the title poem it represents her childhood ambition to be a poet; in another, she rejects pressure towards achievement and longs to return to the sensual world of the earth. This startlingly honest book follows the ladder of a life for seventy-five years, in poems that show how much is connected. Unlocking the voice of a silenced, powerless girl, Feaver writes about an apparently stable childhood which, to her, was painfully insecure: tormented with parental expectations and sibling jealousy, torn between mother and grandmother. The eleven-year-old who wanted to become a poet becomes the woman 'buried under ice with words burning inside', who becomes the old woman still 'searching for words' - fearful now of memory loss and a failing body. I Want I Want is the work of a poet looking for a pattern in her life before it's too late. Urgent, accessible and deeply moving, this is poetry of witness and survival: a vivid testament to the triumph of a poet's spirit.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781787331815
- ISBN-10: 1787331814
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape
- Publish Date: February 2020
- Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.2 pounds
- Page Count: 80
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