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Radical Normalisation

Celia A Sorhaindo

Cover of Radical Normalisation by Celia Sorhaindo
10% off all versions
Categories: 21st Century, BAME, British, Caribbean, First Collections, Women
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
Available as:
Paperback (104 pages)
(Pub. Sep 2022)
9781800172395
£11.99 £10.79
eBook (EPUB) Needs ADE!
(Pub. Sep 2022)
9781800172401
£9.59 £8.63
Digital access available through Exact Editions
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  • Description
  • Author
  • Reviews
  • Celia A Sorhaindo's engrossing debut, Radical Normalisation, writes back from the margins, bringing readers to her Dominican home. It adjusts perspectives on the universal questions about poetry as a resource and value in the present. Sorhaindo's wit and linguistic inventiveness are clear in her reflections on the art and the arts, her dramatization of the Dominica-born novelist Jean Rhys's voice, and her reflections on the natural world—a natural world different from others but continuous with them. She records its changes and reckons with it in a series of poems that respond to the destruction visited on Dominica, most recently by Hurricane Maria. Her writing led John Robert Lee to hail, 'a new voice that speaks with sensitivity, maturity and assurance out of a horrendous experience'.
    Celia A Sorhaindo was born in the Commonwealth of Dominica. She migrated with her family to England in 1976, when she was eight years old, returning home in 2005. Her poems have been published in Verse Daily, Illuminations International Magazine, Rattle, Mslexia, Wasafiri, Anomaly, Magma Poetry, Lolwe, New Daughters of Africa ... read more
    'The poems are varied in form; they are visually and aurally energetic. They scour a great range of feelings and experiences. The reader is welcomed into Sorhaindo's physical and emotional orbits.'
    Kay Syrad, ARTEMISpoetry
    'This fearless, eclectic debut harnesses the interrogative force of poetry, querying how we define a community, society, continent or memory, these poems subvert cliche and radically rethink our relationship with ordinary things and moments... The book reads like a tug of war, in which concentrated sonnet-like poems about the role of the poet and the public vie with meandering, experimental, prosy pieces exploring personal memory and ancestral wounds'

    Kit Fan, The Guardian

     'Radical Normalisation is a tour-de-force of ars poetica. In running dialogue with herself and numerous other poets and writers, Sorhaindo repeatedly addresses poetry - and has poetry talk back. Whether focussed on survival after a hurricane or the line between 'madness' and 'unravelling,' Sorhaindo pushes, defines, and redefines the terms and stakes of 'this poem.' In sonically, imagistically, and formally explosive measure, she makes the 'normal' radical and frees it to sing in its chains.'

    Shara McCallum
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