Aloneness is a Many-Headed Bird 

co-written with Dawn Gorman 

Hedgehog Press, 2020
 

Ian Royce Chamberlain calls this ‘the most enthralling book of poetry I've read in a long time… pages and pages of lines of the type I long to read, and strive for myself, but never quite achieve… poems of raw honesty, undiluted, introspective but unashamed, clear-eyed, staring down the reader and daring them not to look away.’

Aloneness is a Many-Headed Bird won 1st prize in the Hedgehog Press competition for their ‘Conversation’ series, a dialogue of 20 poems by two writers. Rosie Jackson and Dawn Gorman had no trouble in deciding on their theme: women, sex, ageing bodies and mortality, with occasional related digressions into the Natural World.

Chamberlain writes in High Window: ‘The result is not the first book of poetry which might be sub-titled at-this-stage-of-my-life, but it is the most open and honest I’ve come across. That rawness is combined with the confident lyricism of two writers clearly at the top of their game. Reading and re-reading this consummate selection I was continually reminded of Sharon Olds, pieces like ‘I Go Back to May, 1937’. It’s easy to see why Aloneness… rose to the top of the judges’ pile.’