"How can a poem tell / all that is of and behind the two of us," begins the opening poem of To Sing You, and to Shout, and while one poem may not be able capture a fraught relationship with an unstable mother, Jessica Covil-Manset's poems across this collection certainly bring readers into the complexity, into "the pain-pleasure of who we are." These brave and vulnerable poems show us empty cupboards and manipulation as well as nice phone calls and doubled-over laughter, walking us through the depths of memory toward the relief of understanding and letting go.
-Katie Manning, EIC of Whale Road Review & author of Hereverent and Tasty Other
Jessica Covil-Manset's To Sing You, and to Shout is a lyrical tapestry of memory, love, and loss, spun from the delicate threads of a fraught mother-daughter relationship. With each line, the poet invites us to listen closely-to the edge in a mother's voice, the quiet ache of painful memories, and the waves of feeling that crash against the shore of self. The collection dances between moments of tenderness and haunting absence, tracing the contours of childhood and the scars that linger as we learn to let go. These poems, fierce and vulnerable, are an offering of both ode and protest to the archive of memory. To Sing You, and to Shout offers readers an arresting meditation on the spaces we inhabit and the voices we continually carry, reaching across time to touch the moments we cannot forget.
-Jessica Q. Stark, Poetry Editor for AGNI & author of Buffalo Girl
Autorentext
Jessica Covil-Manset is a writer and communicator living in Durham, NC, with her husband, daughter, and cat. She holds a BA in English and Spanish from the University of Chicago and a PhD in English from Duke University. Her dissertation, "Toward a Different Way of Knowing/Being/Speaking: Poetic Openings and Feminist Praxis in Contemporary Works," is freely available online. Her poetry explores gender, relationships, trauma, self-discovery, and joy. She has been twice nominated for Best of the Net, with poems appearing in SWWIM Every Day, Rise Up Review, Whale Road Review, and other journals. A long-time member of Raleigh's Tongue & Groove Open Mic, she believes in the power of the spoken word and shared space, just as she relishes curling up with a good book. To Sing You, and to Shout is her debut collection.