***Online event - Zoom link will be sent to you on the day of the event*** Cliterature, the Vagina Museum's book club, offers you a generous and satisfying fingering through the feminist pages. Well include a mixture of fiction, non-fiction, essays and poetry. Everyone is welcome. Our book club is led by former trustee, Niharika Jain.
About the book:
When we first met, I was a child, and she had been dead for centuries.
I am eleven, a dark-haired child given to staring out window ... Her voice
makes it 1773, a fine day in May, and puts English soldiers crouching in
ambush; I add ditch-water to drench their knees. Their muskets point towards
a young man who is falling from his saddle in slow, slow motion. A woman
hurries in and kneels over him, her voice rising in an antique formula of
breath and syllable the teacher calls a caoineadh, a keen to lament the
dead.'
A true original, this stunning prose debut by Doireann N Ghrofa weaves two
stories together. In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her
husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an
extraordinary poem that reaches across the centuries to another poet. In the
present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy in her own life. On
encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with finding out the rest of the
story.
Doireann N Ghrofa has sculpted a fluid hybrid of essay and autofiction to
explore the ways in which a life can be changed in response to the discovery
of another's -- in this case, Eibhln Dubh N Chonaill's Caoineadh Airt U
Laoghaire, famously referred to by Peter Levi as 'the greatest poem written
in either Ireland or Britain during the eighteenth century.'
A devastating and timeless tale about finding your voice by freeing
another's.
About the authour:
Doireann N Ghrofa is a bilingual writer devoted to exploring how the past
makes itself felt within the present. A Ghost in the Throat finds an 18th
century poet haunting a young mother, leading her through visions of blood,
milk, lust, and murder. Written on the roof of a multi-storey car park in
Ireland, it went on to be described as powerful (New York Times),
captivatingly original (The Guardian), and a masterpiece (Sunday Business
Post). 'A Ghost in the Throat won the James Tait Black Prize and was voted
overall Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards, while the US edition was a
finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times
Notable Book of 2021. It is to appear in 19 further languages worldwide.
Doireann is also the author of six critically-acclaimed books of poetry, each
a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for
her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize
(Italy), the James Tait Black Prize (Scotland), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship,
and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, among others.
How to get the book:
If you can, try to get your hands on a copy via your local independent
bookshop or library as a physical book, e-book or audiobook.
As this is a participatory event by nature, not a performance, anyone who
doesn't engage - which can via audio, text, or any method accessible to you -
will be automatically removed to ensure safety of all participants. Dont
worry if youve not finished the book in time for the session, having read
some or most of it will help you take part in our discussion.
Live transcription will be enabled on Zoom for all our events. If you need a
transcript after the event, please email us at [email protected] to get
a copy.
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