Call and Response is a sequence of sonnets from the perspective of a daughter, addressed to her mother during her mother's illness. Hard-edged yet tender, the poems explore the darker side of familial bonds and the strange ways suffering can heal old wounds.

Rachel Spence lives in London, Ludlow and Venice. Her poems explore themes including time, absence, motherhood and water. She has published three pamphlets 'Furies' (Templar 2016), 'Call and Response' (Emma Press, 2020), and 'Uncalendared' (Coast to Coast Journal Winner 2023). Her debut collection 'Bird of Sorrow' (Templar, 2018) was highly commended in the Forward Prize 2019. Her prose poem 'Venice Unclocked', in collaboration with photographer Giacomo Cosua, was published by Ivory Press in 2022. Her poetry has been published widely including in PN Review, The North, The Financial Times and The London Magazine. Her non-fiction book 'The Battle For the Museum', which explores the relationship between art, power and money, was published by Hurst in 2024.

Call and Response is a sequence of sonnets from the perspective of a daughter, addressed to her mother during her mother's illness. Hard-edged yet tender, the poems explore the darker side of familial bonds and the strange ways suffering can heal old wounds. April. The relief of finding you perched on your hospital bed. Lipsticked and cashmered. Defiantly undimmed. Twelve hours post-op, you've drunk them out of tea and think you'd like to go now. Nurses calling you the Steve Redgrave of patients. Your healing seeded centuries ago, tough as the ash trees fighting their way through frost-bitten Polish soil, hunger for a better life incubating in clogged, shtetl light. And yes, I'm proud to be your daughter. We've cared what the neighbours thought since we were in the caves. My ancestral grannies counted grapefruit spoons, possessed small dishes shaped like avocados.