Description
“Carefully crafted like precious jewels, these debut pamphlet poems are a delight … touching and rewarding. Brava!” – Kate Noakes, London Grip (read full review here)
“Combine[s] an impressive, technical ease with explorations of profound, personal narratives […]. Highly recommended.” – Orbis #194
“This is a startling first collection that has a constant thread, the body’s ability to retain memory, hurt, love, want, within its frame. Not an easy read but a must read.” – Artemis, Issue 25
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‘What does she learn about the body?’
New Hunger weaves mythology and biology together through subtle poems that link our human bodies to the natural world in both celebration and anxiety as our familiar spaces shift dangerously around us.
New Hunger includes ‘Ouroboros’, winner of the Live Canon Poetry Competition 2019, judged by Zaffar Kunial.
Ouroboros
Think of this as hibernation;
learning to last on the body’s
own larder of fat, like an adder,
overwintering; waking only
to shed the layers of skin
it no longer wants, or needs.
You begin to mistake hunger
for thirst, sate the ache
in your gut with citrus tea,
mugs of ice. The punnet
of grapes bruised by your bed:
a still life. Starving, you take
your feet, or tail, between
your teeth, then swallow.
Ouroboros, viper, faster,
feasting on muscle, bone,
you vanish into yourself;
a wraith now, wreath.
Ella Duffy is a London-based poet, originally from Manchester. Her work has appeared in Ambit, The Guardian Review, Pain, The Rialto and elsewhere. She was awarded third place in the 2019 Ambit Poetry Competition and was a runner-up in the 2018 Ginkgo Prize for Ecopoetry. Ella was a winner of the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award in 2010.
