Description
Beautiful, poised and unflinching debut pamphlet from this exciting poet.
“Through which openings does someone enter when they control the life of another? How do you push that harm back out, and first reclaim, then love, your own attacked self? Beautiful, poised, and unflinching, Matches tracks one woman’s encounter with domestic abuse and violence. Written with “the sharp end of a question mark”, it also records the path she created to free herself from a world where every move is set up to be the wrong one. A light out of darkness for many, and a place of learning for all of us, these are poems to honour and cherish.” – Alice Hiller
“Gander makes a devastating articulation of the violence done to women who see themselves solely and cruelly through the eyes of another. What these poems make possible is the rarest chance for healing; I feel changed, alive, compelled by her courage.” – Sandeep Parmar
Catherine Gander was born in England and now lives in Ireland. Her poetry has appeared in numerous places, including Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry London, On the Seawall, Palette, and Firmament, and she is the co-author of the poetry pamphlet Sea Between Us (Nine Pens Press, 2022, with Georgia Hilton and Anna Kisby). An academic and critic, Catherine is co-founder of the Poetry & Poetics series with Karl O’Hanlon at Maynooth University and has won awards from the Irish Research Council and the Irish Writers’ Centre to work on diversity and mentorship programmes in poetry criticism, and to develop her own writing.