In her devastatingly powerful debut collection, young people's laureate Cecilia Knapp examines her experience of motherlessness and its lasting impact, as well as the lessons passed between generations of women in her family. These poems explore her relationship with her body, with sex, and with shame. She traverses the violence of romantic love, but also employs humour and mischief, a wry reclaiming of her power.
We hear stories of a challenging childhood in a seaside town, a girl growing up, getting out and reconciling the guilt of being 'one of these people now.'
The collection also offers a look at her 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 the experience of anxiety and insecurity inflicted by a woman's past, by the current moment and by a life deeply affected by grief. But it is also a collection full of dreams, hope and persistence, a willingness to question and to carry on.
