Peach Pig: The debut collection from the Young People's Laureate for London, Forward Prize-shortlisted author

Description

'Cecilia Knapp is a great writer. I love her' KAE TEMPEST In her devastatingly powerful debut collection, Cecilia Knapp examines the experience of motherlessness and its lasting impact, as well as the lessons passed between generations of women. These poems explore women's complicated relationship with their bodies, with sex, and with shame as she traverses the violence of romantic love, but also employs humour and mischief, a wry reclaiming of power. We hear stories of a challenging childhood in a seaside town, a girl growing up, getting out and reckoning with the guilt of being 'one of these people now.' The collection also offers a look at Knapp's close relationship with her older brother, his struggles with addiction and, eventually, his death. With tenderness, she remembers him and unpacks the unique grief that comes after a suicide. Peach Pig is a candid and unflinching look at loss, an attempt to find a language for it. It grapples with feelings of anxiety, insecurity and displaced anger; but it is also a collection full of dreams, hope and vibrant persistence, a willingness to question and to carry on.

Cecilia Knapp is a poet and novelist and the Young People's Laureate for London 2020/2021. She was shortlisted for the 2022 Forward prize for best single poem. She is the winner of the 2021 Ruth Rendell award and has been shortlisted for both the Rebecca Swift Women's Prize and the Outspoken Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in The White Review, Granta, Wasafiri, Popshot, Ambit, Magma and bath magg. She curated the anthology Everything is Going to be Alright: Poems for When you Really Need Them, published by Trapeze in 2021. Her debut novel Little Boxes is published by The Borough Press. She teaches poetry and creative writing in a number of settings and lives in London.

Cecilia Knapp is a great writer. I love her -- KAE TEMPEST Cecilia Knapp is a rare, rare talent. The sort of writer you get excited to have found and then look forward to devouring more of their work -- KERRY HUDSON Love this book - the stunning first collection by Cecilia Knapp. So much to recognise and feel about girlhood, loss, shame, love - expressed with bags of elegance, generosity & power -- Amy Acre The debut collection by a former young people's laureate for London is arrestingly frank in its exposure of everyday worries and profound melancholy . . . Knapp writes with a light touch even when her heart is heaviest: her mother died when she was seven and her alcoholic brother also died too young. The collection comes into its own in loving and painful poems about him . . . this tormented collection has a saving grace -- Kate Kellaway * Observer 'Poetry book of the month' *