Girlhood

<b>WINNER OF THE DEREK WALCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRY</b> <p/> Julia Copus's new collection <i>Girlhood</i> is a book of transgressed boundaries and seductive veneers. Restlessly inquisitive it exposes the shifting power balance between things on the verge of becoming and the forces that threaten to destroy them. <p/> Reading these poems we have the sense of encountering a series of filmic installations arranged by episode in a gallery. Lost censored or disparaged voices speak out from secluded spaces and moments of hidden history: from within a professor's office and a deserted department store; from kitchens bedrooms hallways and upstairs windows; through changing weathers fidgety shadows and the witching hour. <p/> <i>Girlhood</i> concludes with a sequence set in a psychiatric hospital that reimagines Jacques Lacan's treatment of his most famous case study Marguerite Pantaine. This dramatic meeting of minds has us questioning who is the more delusional - doctor or patient: like other victims in this exhilarating new collection Marguerite may initially appear vanquished but a closer look reveals how little of herself she has really surrendered.