In Flood, Jessica Mookherjee inhabits several identities in her 'bone-framed coat'. With overarching themes of migration, otherness, sexual awakening, and maternal mental illness, we encounter the aftermath of catastrophe, of loss and being lost.

Here, 'time folds us into origami boats' - and the poems swell with the surging tides of youth and of becoming, of what we inherit and what we forge as our own path - and what happens when we jump into the depths and experience life in full-flow. Alive with wildlife and nightlife, mythmaking and bad romance, the everyday and the otherworldly, Flood is a prodigious debut collection from a truly distinctive and vital voice, now reissued in this new edition by Nine Arches Press.

About the Author
Jessica Mookherjee is a British poet of Bengali heritage and grew up in Wales and London, and now lives in Kent. She has been published in many journals and anthologies, and was twice highly commended for Best Single Poem in the Forward Prizes in 2017 and 2021. Author of three previous collections from Nine Arches Press, her second collection, Tigress, was shortlisted for the Ledbury Prize in 2021. She has two pamphlets, Playlists and Desire Lines with Broken Sleep Books. Jessica has a background in biological socio-ecology and public mental health. She also runs workshops and mentors poets.

Reviews

"Jessica Mookherjee's Flood is an at-times overwhelming read. It is dense with the loss and longing of mothers, daughters and childless women who are nevertheless also both. This tremendously unified book demands to be read at a single sitting, and is a striking testament to a life lived - and survived."

-- Fiona Sampson

"The language of Jessica Mookherjee's poems is vividly immediate, with its own rich culture, distinctive rhythms and striking imagery. The separate stories in the poems of Flood flow together into a single current, deep and powerful enough to evoke the experience of several lives."

-- Susan Wicks

"In this collection, Jessica Mookherjee is a genuine virtuoso with a powerful original voice. She creates a vivid cosmos as, with verve, she cuts through facades, plunges into depths and shows a gutsy life on the edge of things. Wales, England, London, Bengal, India and elsewhere are woven with wondrous imagination and sharp, incisive imagery into the poems, all of which breathe and flow with a music all her own, exposing what it is to live and be brought up in our multi-cultural society. This is poetry worth noting."

-- Patricia McCarthy



Book Information
ISBN 9781916760004
Author Jessica Mookherjee
Format Paperback
Imprint Nine Arches Press
Publisher Nine Arches Press
Weight(grams) 157g