Description
Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2021
Shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize 2022
PBS Special Commendation Summer 2021
Alice Hiller's debut performs an act of witness and restitution. Working with her childhood and adolescent medical notes, bird of winter creates a redemptive language to speak the darkness of being sexually abused by a family member. Through the excavated histories of Pompeii and Herculaneum, these poems additionally document the grooming that prepares a child for sexual abuse, and the vulnerability which remains afterwards. Calling up the landscapes and relationships which sustained her, as well as the injury she experienced, Hiller reflects the nature and impact of a crime to which millions around the world are subjected - and asks how we may find our ways towards healing.
About the Author
Alice Hiller is a writer from London and Dieppe. She is the author of The T-Shirt Book (Ebury Press), and holds a PhD from UCL. Her journalism has been published in the Observer supplement and her reviews in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The TLS, Magma, Literary Imagination and Essays in Criticism. She was the founding Reviews Editor of Harana Poetry and interviews poets in depth about 'saying the difficult thing' on her alicehiller blog. Hiller was a Jerwood Arvon Poetry Mentee for 2017-2018 and shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Poetry Fellowship in 2019. Her poems have appeared in Poetry London, Stand, The Cambridge Literary Review, Magma, tentacular, one hand clapping, perverse and elsewhere. Hiller founded and runs a free poetry workshop aimed at supporting and developing poets working with 'less welcome' materials. She curates the Estate of the emigre sculptor Oscar Nemon, about whom she has also written.
Reviews
'bird of winter reminds us that the root of courage, etymological and otherwise, is heart. Prepare, Dear Reader, to feel.'
Nuar Alsadir
'Alice Hiller's project is the excavation of a city of grief from beneath the ashes of memory. It does what poetry does best: it makes a new, hard-won truth and a beauty of its absences and denials. Its partial shapes and unstable formal qualities consequently come to live in the reader.
It doesn't redeem, it scorches.'
Sasha Dugdale
'This collection bears witness to the resilience of human nature, with poetry giving voice to the silences within that are so hard to talk about. Yet they must be voiced, and Alice Hiller has turned her devastating childhood experiences into a narrative of transformation that everyone should read.'
Mary Mulholland, The Alchemy Spoon
'Between the obscurity and bewilderment of her erasure poems, and her other visually arresting, formally playful work, Hiller never loses sight of the vivid world in which an escape from oppressive interiority is made possible.'
Juliano Zaffino
'Alice Hiller's potent debut collection, Bird of Winter, commands respect and reverence. Composure is required to absorb this essential and courageously intimate exploration of sexual abuse. [...] Hiller's fearless writing is neither crude nor violent despite indicating unbearable violations. The specifics and long-standing impact of abuse are rarely written with such tender flair. [Her] words are cathartic, proud, persistent and we are compelled to read to further our understanding of a violation perturbingly common. [...] Through dynamic form and the powerful imagery of excavated histories, that offers a deeper awareness of the reality of sexual abuse and the consequent devastation, Hiller reclaims a voice that we are compelled to hear. This is a poet so brave, resolved to gather the ruins of an appalling early childhood and redefine herself as more than a catastrophic moment in time.'
Victoria Lothian, Dundee University Review of the Arts
'Hiller's writing is precise, delicate and starkly austere. [...] These accessible poems often reflect the vulnerability of the speaker as a child and make use of white space and fragments of text. The disturbing subject matter is depicted with care and distance through searing image-making. An exceptional debut, courageous and devastating in equal measure. This is a profoundly moving and important book, which oscillates between life and death, loss and regeneration, light and dark. The final poem 'o goddess isis' epitomises the speaker's movement towards freedom, to 'dissolve night', 'reveal the sunrise'.'
Jennifer Lee Tsai, Mslexia
'Through great erudition and a razor-sharp focus on image, this collection raises faultless victimhood from the ash like a phoenix. [...] With exacting erudition, a strong connection to the natural world, and the power of a witness statement, Alice Hiller's bird of winter is beautiful to hold, a pleasure to open, and a testament of vindication. Hiller exorcises shame through beauty and assembles redemption with acute detail.'
David Morgan O'Connor, RHINO
'The book is an impressive example of the power of poetic control, in its choice of what information to share with the reader and its simplicity of diction and line. [...] The poems throw off the tethers ofsocially sanctioned silences around abuse till the unpunctuated and carefully punctured lines soar. [...] With their gaze resolutely on the grievous hurt arising from abuse, these poems are a deep reproach to the act of looking away. bird of winter will turn your gaze towards damaging behaviours that we know happen but can't bear to focus on. Read it.'Claire Crowther, Magma Poetry
'Alice Hiller's debut poetry collection bird of winter is an act of witness, exceptional in its exploration of form, sources and landscape, and deeply humane in purpose. [...] Some poets wait patiently for poems to reach them like gifts from the elements, from air and water. Others build work from their own flesh, blood and bones, in defiance of censorship and silencing. Alice Hiller is a rare poet who uses both approaches to write an extraordinary testimony of trauma that offers fierce resistance, as well as hope to survivors of sexual abuse.'Pauline Rowe, Poets' Directory
Book Information
ISBN 9781800348691
Author Alice Hiller
Format Paperback
Page Count 86
Imprint Liverpool University Press
Publisher Liverpool University Press
Shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize 2022
PBS Special Commendation Summer 2021
Alice Hiller's debut performs an act of witness and restitution. Working with her childhood and adolescent medical notes, bird of winter creates a redemptive language to speak the darkness of being sexually abused by a family member. Through the excavated histories of Pompeii and Herculaneum, these poems additionally document the grooming that prepares a child for sexual abuse, and the vulnerability which remains afterwards. Calling up the landscapes and relationships which sustained her, as well as the injury she experienced, Hiller reflects the nature and impact of a crime to which millions around the world are subjected - and asks how we may find our ways towards healing.
About the Author
Alice Hiller is a writer from London and Dieppe. She is the author of The T-Shirt Book (Ebury Press), and holds a PhD from UCL. Her journalism has been published in the Observer supplement and her reviews in The Poetry Review, Poetry London, The TLS, Magma, Literary Imagination and Essays in Criticism. She was the founding Reviews Editor of Harana Poetry and interviews poets in depth about 'saying the difficult thing' on her alicehiller blog. Hiller was a Jerwood Arvon Poetry Mentee for 2017-2018 and shortlisted for the Arts Foundation Poetry Fellowship in 2019. Her poems have appeared in Poetry London, Stand, The Cambridge Literary Review, Magma, tentacular, one hand clapping, perverse and elsewhere. Hiller founded and runs a free poetry workshop aimed at supporting and developing poets working with 'less welcome' materials. She curates the Estate of the emigre sculptor Oscar Nemon, about whom she has also written.
Reviews
'bird of winter reminds us that the root of courage, etymological and otherwise, is heart. Prepare, Dear Reader, to feel.'
Nuar Alsadir
'Alice Hiller's project is the excavation of a city of grief from beneath the ashes of memory. It does what poetry does best: it makes a new, hard-won truth and a beauty of its absences and denials. Its partial shapes and unstable formal qualities consequently come to live in the reader.
It doesn't redeem, it scorches.'
Sasha Dugdale
'This collection bears witness to the resilience of human nature, with poetry giving voice to the silences within that are so hard to talk about. Yet they must be voiced, and Alice Hiller has turned her devastating childhood experiences into a narrative of transformation that everyone should read.'
Mary Mulholland, The Alchemy Spoon
'Between the obscurity and bewilderment of her erasure poems, and her other visually arresting, formally playful work, Hiller never loses sight of the vivid world in which an escape from oppressive interiority is made possible.'
Juliano Zaffino
'Alice Hiller's potent debut collection, Bird of Winter, commands respect and reverence. Composure is required to absorb this essential and courageously intimate exploration of sexual abuse. [...] Hiller's fearless writing is neither crude nor violent despite indicating unbearable violations. The specifics and long-standing impact of abuse are rarely written with such tender flair. [Her] words are cathartic, proud, persistent and we are compelled to read to further our understanding of a violation perturbingly common. [...] Through dynamic form and the powerful imagery of excavated histories, that offers a deeper awareness of the reality of sexual abuse and the consequent devastation, Hiller reclaims a voice that we are compelled to hear. This is a poet so brave, resolved to gather the ruins of an appalling early childhood and redefine herself as more than a catastrophic moment in time.'
Victoria Lothian, Dundee University Review of the Arts
'Hiller's writing is precise, delicate and starkly austere. [...] These accessible poems often reflect the vulnerability of the speaker as a child and make use of white space and fragments of text. The disturbing subject matter is depicted with care and distance through searing image-making. An exceptional debut, courageous and devastating in equal measure. This is a profoundly moving and important book, which oscillates between life and death, loss and regeneration, light and dark. The final poem 'o goddess isis' epitomises the speaker's movement towards freedom, to 'dissolve night', 'reveal the sunrise'.'
Jennifer Lee Tsai, Mslexia
'Through great erudition and a razor-sharp focus on image, this collection raises faultless victimhood from the ash like a phoenix. [...] With exacting erudition, a strong connection to the natural world, and the power of a witness statement, Alice Hiller's bird of winter is beautiful to hold, a pleasure to open, and a testament of vindication. Hiller exorcises shame through beauty and assembles redemption with acute detail.'
David Morgan O'Connor, RHINO
'The book is an impressive example of the power of poetic control, in its choice of what information to share with the reader and its simplicity of diction and line. [...] The poems throw off the tethers ofsocially sanctioned silences around abuse till the unpunctuated and carefully punctured lines soar. [...] With their gaze resolutely on the grievous hurt arising from abuse, these poems are a deep reproach to the act of looking away. bird of winter will turn your gaze towards damaging behaviours that we know happen but can't bear to focus on. Read it.'Claire Crowther, Magma Poetry
'Alice Hiller's debut poetry collection bird of winter is an act of witness, exceptional in its exploration of form, sources and landscape, and deeply humane in purpose. [...] Some poets wait patiently for poems to reach them like gifts from the elements, from air and water. Others build work from their own flesh, blood and bones, in defiance of censorship and silencing. Alice Hiller is a rare poet who uses both approaches to write an extraordinary testimony of trauma that offers fierce resistance, as well as hope to survivors of sexual abuse.'Pauline Rowe, Poets' Directory
'Hiller offers extraordinary resilience and moments of immense, liberatory tenderness... This is a harrowing book, yes, but ultimately, with its invitation to "billow forth the wrecks we hold", with its emphasis on resistance and joy, it is a staggeringly beautiful piece of life-affirming work.' Stephanie Sy-Quia, The Poetry Review
Book Information
ISBN 9781800348691
Author Alice Hiller
Format Paperback
Page Count 86
Imprint Liverpool University Press
Publisher Liverpool University Press
