Silage

by Bethany W Pope

“In ‘Peer Gynt’ Henrik Ibsen wrote ‘To live is to war with trolls in the vaults of heart and soul. To write is to sit in judgement of oneself.’ I have found that, in order for life to have any meaning, both sides of that prescription must be thoroughly fulfilled. This book is the result of my own battle with the trolls, and the years of careful self-analysis which came after. My fight took place in the antiseptic halls and silage-scented barn of a South Carolina orphanage. Clarity came much later, once that story was focused through the crystal lens of form. Another great writer, Margaret Atwood, said that in order to become a writer a child must be given 'solitude and books'. Loneliness, isolation, and imaginative food are required for the creation of an inner world that is strong enough to draw from. In many ways, this collection is the record of the space where mine grew.” Bethany W. Pope

Genres: Poetry

72 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 6, 2017

About the author

Bethany W Pope is an LBA winning author, and a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Awards, the Cinnamon Press Novel competition, and the Ink, Sweat and Tears poetry commission, with many other prize listings for prose and poetry. She received her PhD from Aberystwyth University’s Creative Writing programme, and her MA from the University of Wales Trinity St David. She has published several collections of poetry: A Radiance (Cultured Llama, 2012) Crown of Thorns, (Oneiros Books, 2013), The Gospel of Flies (Writing Knights Press 2014), and Undisturbed Circles (Lapwing, 2014). Her latest collection, The Rag and Boneyard, was released by Indigo Dreams in 2016 and her chapbook, Among the White Roots, will be released by Three Drops Press this Autumn. Her work has appeared in many literary magazines across Europe, and in several anthologies including The Poet’s Quest for God (Eyewear), A Flock of Shadows (Parthian Books), and Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe Books).

Reviews

[Ivy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Bethany W. Pope’s Silage (Indigo Dreams, 2017) hums with tension. Two forces pull on the string that threads this work. At one end of the string, there is a dire need to tell an extremely traumatic story and to tell it well. The other end leads to a tiger, waiting at the bottom of a pit, ravening, ready to drag the speaker down. So to keep the tiger at bay, the speaker recounts her story, as flatly as possible. It works, mostly. But then again, there are scars. There is blood."