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Hand & Skull
This third collection draws on the Welsh landscape and the harshness of rural life, as well as on Brigley's later immersion in the American landscape and her perception of a sense of hollowness in particular communities here. Other strands include the horror of violence, especially violence towards women, contrasted with poems which offer comfort by working as beatitudes or seeking a way of being that is more beautiful. There are also epistolary poems, letters to or from real, imagined and remembered women like the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, Thomas Hardy's Tess, and Edna Pontellier from Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Brigley (Thompson) grew up in Wales, and is now an Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University. All of her titles, including this one, have been Poetry Book Society recommendations.
- GenresPoetry
65 pages, ebook
First published May 23, 2019
1 person is currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Zoë Brigley
22 books53 followersZoë Brigley is the author of three books of poetry published by Bloodaxe: Hand & Skull (2019), Conquest (2012), and The Secret (2007). All three are UK Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Poems from the collections have won an Eric Gregory Award for the best British poets under 30, have been longlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize for the best international writers under 40, and were Forward Prize commended.
She has also published a collection of nonfiction essays: Notes from a Swing State: Writing from Wales and America (Parthian 2019), which was well received in reviews. Her most recent chapbooks include: Aubade After A French Movie (Broken Sleep, 2020), Into Eros (Verve, 2021), and Lycanthrope (Salò Press, 2024). She collaborated with Kristian Evans for a prose chapbook Otherworlds: Writing on Nature and Magic (Broken Sleep 2021), and with Jenny Mitchell and Roy McFarlane for the forthcoming Family Name (Nine Pens, 2023).
Her writing appears in publications like Australian Book Review, Chicago Review, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Poetry Ireland Review, Orion, Poetry Review, PN Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Copper Nickel, and Waxwing.
She researches literature, film, trauma, and representations of violence. She co-edited the academic volume Feminism, Literature, and Rape Narratives (with Sorcha Gunne). Her research articles appear in The Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Formations, Feminist Media Studies, Gender and Education, and Contemporary Women’s Writing. For a number of years, she produced a podcast with her students on anti-violence advocacy at SinisterMyth.com .
She became editor for Wales’ leading poetry journal Poetry Wales in 2021, and she is now Poetry Editor for Seren Books jointly with the poet Rhian Edwards. She was also an editor for Magma Poetry, a special issue on ‘Dwelling’ in 2021 with Kristian Evans and Rob Mackenzie. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she also curated Dwelling During the Pandemic: An Ohio Poetry Project.
With Kristian Evans, she was co-editor of the Seren anthology 100 Poems to Save the Earth (Seren 2021), and together they founded MODRON: Writing on the Ecological Crisis, which she works on with Evans and editors Taz Rahman, Siân Melangell Dafydd, and Glyn Edwards.
Zoë is a disabled writer; she is deaf and identifies as neurodivergent.
She has also published a collection of nonfiction essays: Notes from a Swing State: Writing from Wales and America (Parthian 2019), which was well received in reviews. Her most recent chapbooks include: Aubade After A French Movie (Broken Sleep, 2020), Into Eros (Verve, 2021), and Lycanthrope (Salò Press, 2024). She collaborated with Kristian Evans for a prose chapbook Otherworlds: Writing on Nature and Magic (Broken Sleep 2021), and with Jenny Mitchell and Roy McFarlane for the forthcoming Family Name (Nine Pens, 2023).
Her writing appears in publications like Australian Book Review, Chicago Review, Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Poetry Ireland Review, Orion, Poetry Review, PN Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Copper Nickel, and Waxwing.
She researches literature, film, trauma, and representations of violence. She co-edited the academic volume Feminism, Literature, and Rape Narratives (with Sorcha Gunne). Her research articles appear in The Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Formations, Feminist Media Studies, Gender and Education, and Contemporary Women’s Writing. For a number of years, she produced a podcast with her students on anti-violence advocacy at SinisterMyth.com .
She became editor for Wales’ leading poetry journal Poetry Wales in 2021, and she is now Poetry Editor for Seren Books jointly with the poet Rhian Edwards. She was also an editor for Magma Poetry, a special issue on ‘Dwelling’ in 2021 with Kristian Evans and Rob Mackenzie. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she also curated Dwelling During the Pandemic: An Ohio Poetry Project.
With Kristian Evans, she was co-editor of the Seren anthology 100 Poems to Save the Earth (Seren 2021), and together they founded MODRON: Writing on the Ecological Crisis, which she works on with Evans and editors Taz Rahman, Siân Melangell Dafydd, and Glyn Edwards.
Zoë is a disabled writer; she is deaf and identifies as neurodivergent.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 8, 2020
I blurbed this book, so obviously I think it's splendid, so I'll just quote myself here:
"Hand & Skull examines the complex relationships between human and nonhuman lives as well as the ways in which gender informs these experiences. Brigley regularly uses epistolaries to establish dialogues, often addressing or personifying women of myth, literature, and history, such as Leda Edna Pontellier, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Gender violence and violence against animnals are often central concerns, but what makes the collection particularly compelling is its refusal to let tragedy be the only note it sings; many of the poems also embrace the complicated wonders of motherhood, of devotion. Hand & Skull dazzled me with its agility and subtlety, its graceful inquiry into how gender, violence, myth, devotion, and the natural world braid through our lives."
"Hand & Skull examines the complex relationships between human and nonhuman lives as well as the ways in which gender informs these experiences. Brigley regularly uses epistolaries to establish dialogues, often addressing or personifying women of myth, literature, and history, such as Leda Edna Pontellier, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Gender violence and violence against animnals are often central concerns, but what makes the collection particularly compelling is its refusal to let tragedy be the only note it sings; many of the poems also embrace the complicated wonders of motherhood, of devotion. Hand & Skull dazzled me with its agility and subtlety, its graceful inquiry into how gender, violence, myth, devotion, and the natural world braid through our lives."
July 22, 2019
Star / Sun / Snow is simply the most affecting poem I've read in years. The rest of the poems in this could be awful and it would still get 5 stars for that one. The other poems are also beautiful, of course; Zoë Brigley is an enormous talent and the rage and tenderness in these pages is a quiet but simmering thing, always under the surface. Other favourites are Beatitudes for the Women, My Last Beatitude, and Letter from Nemi. Haunting and visceral work and absolutely recommended.
'Nobody said how close a mother
and baby could be: as close
as teeth in the same
mouth.'
'Nobody said how close a mother
and baby could be: as close
as teeth in the same
mouth.'
March 21, 2023
I liked her first two collections well enough, but with this latest book she moves to a whole new level, both simpler and yet more extraordinary. Richly inventive, she tackles subjects that are sometimes sad, sometimes shocking and sometimes beautiful, but always brilliant. Zoe Brigley is really creating her own poetic sphere that is quite unlike anything else.
January 14, 2021
A full experience. I truly enjoyed Brigley’s lyricism in particular poems, it is a skill that is missing in a lot of contemporary poetry. Accessible but without being pedestrian. Very much worth the read.
December 18, 2022
Compelling and vital. Investigates the idea of woman (and animal) as prey. A book that spoke to me on many levels.
December 21, 2024
"When any man puts his mouth to you, he draws out the scale
of love and dread: misted breath from wet lips on an icy
day, or exhausted fog from the mouth of a smoker: charred
winters, crouched on the fire escape in the back alley."
from "Syringe"
Zoë Brigley's poems understand that I will always chase after the rural, even in my finest skirts. They're there with me, running after the creature in the open sky under heaven, razor grass anointing my bare legs, my lungs heaving brazen. Oh, these poems, their fecund and heart-raw interiors. I have lived here, too.
of love and dread: misted breath from wet lips on an icy
day, or exhausted fog from the mouth of a smoker: charred
winters, crouched on the fire escape in the back alley."
from "Syringe"
Zoë Brigley's poems understand that I will always chase after the rural, even in my finest skirts. They're there with me, running after the creature in the open sky under heaven, razor grass anointing my bare legs, my lungs heaving brazen. Oh, these poems, their fecund and heart-raw interiors. I have lived here, too.
April 24, 2023
Poetry
March 9, 2025
‘Sonnet for the Hole in the Glass’ was set in the feminist writing course I’m taking, so I sought out the full collection in the National Poetry Library.
I’m glad I did, because it includes some amazing poems by Zoe Brigley, three images by Victoria Brooklyn, and Alfred Steiglitz’s photograph ‘Georgia O’Keefe, Hands and Horse Skull’. The cover includes a reproduction of O’Keeffe’s painting ‘Cow Skull with Calico Roses’.
I’d come across ‘Letter from Georgia O’Keeffe’ in other workshops, but the other poems were new to me, and I particularly appreciated the sequence ‘Beatitudes for the Women’ and ‘My Last Beatitude’ which were chilling in just the right ways.
I liked this collection so much, I may have to look into acquiring my own copy, as I’m sure I’ll want to dip into it again.
I’m glad I did, because it includes some amazing poems by Zoe Brigley, three images by Victoria Brooklyn, and Alfred Steiglitz’s photograph ‘Georgia O’Keefe, Hands and Horse Skull’. The cover includes a reproduction of O’Keeffe’s painting ‘Cow Skull with Calico Roses’.
I’d come across ‘Letter from Georgia O’Keeffe’ in other workshops, but the other poems were new to me, and I particularly appreciated the sequence ‘Beatitudes for the Women’ and ‘My Last Beatitude’ which were chilling in just the right ways.
I liked this collection so much, I may have to look into acquiring my own copy, as I’m sure I’ll want to dip into it again.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews