The Republic of Motherhood

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Summary

*'The Republic of Motherhood' Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem*

‘I crossed the border into the Republic of Motherhood
and found it a queendom, a wild queendom.’

In this bold and resonant gathering of poems, Liz Berry turns her distinctive voice to the transformative experience of new motherhood. Her poems sing the body electric, from the joy and anguish of becoming a mother, through its darkest hours to its brightest days. With honesty and unabashed beauty, they bear witness to that most tender of times – when a new life arrives, and everything changes.

Reviews

An electrifying collection of poems that makes your heart sing
Jessie Burton, The Daily Telegraph

About the author

Liz Berry

Liz Berry was born in the Black Country and now lives in Birmingham. Her debut collection, Black Country, 'a sooty, soaring hymn to her native West Midlands' (Guardian), won a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice and the title poem won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem 2018. In The Home Child, a novel in verse, she reimagines the story of her great-aunt Eliza Showell, one of the many children forcibly emigrated to Canada as part of the British Child Migrant schemes.

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