Do you have anything less domestic

Navigating the world, inheriting the gender of woman, feeling more or less comfortable with that, trying to find the ways in which the word is inhabited and where it slips away; wondering where the domestic bleeds into the public; whose place is where and what are the rules? These questions form the basis of Do you have anything less domestic? The poems within whisper quietly behind closed doors at night; take trips out into daily life with a sharp eye and worried tongue; tease at generalities and assumptions about what a woman’s body of work is, what it does, how it looks, reads and feels. The collection is structured into five sections that each take one of these utterances as their heading (each said to or about the author at one time): Do you have anything less domestic; Don’t write about your family, nobody cares; It's important to keep up weight bearing exercise; You have a nice smile, you should use it more; I hope I won’t put anyone off by saying this is genuinely feminist work. The poems move from the intimate and domestic, through family and social themed works, and out to broader themed pieces that are overtly feminist in how they interrogate language, content and form.

Winner of the inaugural 5 Islands Poetry Prize for a First Book of Poetry 2022