REVIEW: Gorilla by Christine Hamm

 

 

 

 

'The world of Christine Hamm’s Gorilla is both fanciful and treacherous.  In these sharp, vivid prose poems, women and girls’ bodies are under threat, as men break into houses, animals trespass into bedrooms and fathers betray daughters.  Language in this collection shocks and startles. Each poem is a surprise. A  horse eats a woman’s hair. A cat drags a movie star into a woman’s bed. A dog is transformed into a woman in a garden. A winged baby flies to the ceiling. At every turn, Hamm’s imagination thrills and delights.'

Nicole Cooley, Author of The Afflicted Girls

BUY THE BOOK

AMAZON UK 

 

MY REVIEW:

 

What an amazing collection this is! I just love poetry that creates the world it inhabits, yet this world is so recognisable. Think of the awful things that can happen to a woman, yet they don't arrest our attention until the assailants turn into animals. Transformative and transgressive, it's a frightening depiction of how violence against women is such casual currency. 

 

Hallucinatory,dissociative, lyrical, disturbing yet sometimes beautiful, it speaks of a certain sort of Americana that is not visible to the naked eye. The nightmare rather than the dream. The figure of the gorilla is the most arresting for me (which certainbly speaks to my own issues). Simultaneously the object of fear and terrified desire, he exerts a strange paternal power over his female subjects. This is a collection to be kept by me, to be read when I need to understand myself a little better. Perfection.

 

Christine Hamm’s Bio:

Christine E. Hamm, queer & disabled English Professor, social worker and student of ecopoetics, has a PhD in English, and lives in New Jersey.  She recently won the Tenth Gate prize from Word Works for her manuscript, Gorilla.  She has had work featured in North American Review, Nat Brut, Painted Bride Quarterly and many others. She has published six chapbooks, and several books -- including Saints & Cannibals, about which Cynthia Cruz said, "Joyfully acrobatic is her language and the wonderful jumps she makes. Hers is a voice we have been waiting for."

INSTAGRAM