Knee to Knee by Rachel Goodman & Elvire Roberts
In this ground-breaking collaboration, Elvire Roberts and Rachel Goodman question the ways in which women have been written over a lifetime, asking – are they fit for purpose? They rip up the rule book, ditching versions of self that have pinned them to the page. What emerges is a witty, raw, sometimes heart-wrenching invitation to inhabit this world in a new language.
Praise for Knee to Knee
Knees are a locus of articulation. Necessary for flexibility and movement. Intersectional. Knees inform our stance. In Knee to Knee two poets combine to expand the boundaries of ‘she’. She is plural, playful, sensual, and anarchic. She asserts fresh punctuation to (re)connect, to halt, to disrupt rigid attitudes. ‘[D]is-verbed’, her poems interrogate the limits of the female as defined by others and assimilated through upbringing, education, and language. Tropes of the ‘good girl’, decorum, silences around menstruation, sexuality, ageing, the ‘shoulds’ performed are incisively broken open. Vibrant juxtapositions flare against constrictions and constructions of selfhood, gendering, and idiom. Knee to Knee is vibrant, exciting, witty, and provocative – compelling reading. - Heidi Williamson
Knee to Knee is a thrillingly bold and passionate venture, a ‘together-poem’ where two poets merge to ‘make / space for us and our iteration(s)’. Coinages and resignified signs team here with energetic phrase-making and beautifully shaped silences to embody resistance to patriarchal constraints and other attempts to diminish human potential. The ‘arc and dip of self’ is both recorded but also importantly interrupted so that female voices can help each other soar. The result is a consistently exciting and thought-provoking collection, fantastically perceptive and alive with imagination. - John McCullough
‘This is just so good! Inventive, utterly original and the best example of true collaboration I’ve ever seen.’ - Ilse Pedler
In this ground-breaking collaboration, Elvire Roberts and Rachel Goodman question the ways in which women have been written over a lifetime, asking – are they fit for purpose? They rip up the rule book, ditching versions of self that have pinned them to the page. What emerges is a witty, raw, sometimes heart-wrenching invitation to inhabit this world in a new language.
Praise for Knee to Knee
Knees are a locus of articulation. Necessary for flexibility and movement. Intersectional. Knees inform our stance. In Knee to Knee two poets combine to expand the boundaries of ‘she’. She is plural, playful, sensual, and anarchic. She asserts fresh punctuation to (re)connect, to halt, to disrupt rigid attitudes. ‘[D]is-verbed’, her poems interrogate the limits of the female as defined by others and assimilated through upbringing, education, and language. Tropes of the ‘good girl’, decorum, silences around menstruation, sexuality, ageing, the ‘shoulds’ performed are incisively broken open. Vibrant juxtapositions flare against constrictions and constructions of selfhood, gendering, and idiom. Knee to Knee is vibrant, exciting, witty, and provocative – compelling reading. - Heidi Williamson
Knee to Knee is a thrillingly bold and passionate venture, a ‘together-poem’ where two poets merge to ‘make / space for us and our iteration(s)’. Coinages and resignified signs team here with energetic phrase-making and beautifully shaped silences to embody resistance to patriarchal constraints and other attempts to diminish human potential. The ‘arc and dip of self’ is both recorded but also importantly interrupted so that female voices can help each other soar. The result is a consistently exciting and thought-provoking collection, fantastically perceptive and alive with imagination. - John McCullough
‘This is just so good! Inventive, utterly original and the best example of true collaboration I’ve ever seen.’ - Ilse Pedler
In this ground-breaking collaboration, Elvire Roberts and Rachel Goodman question the ways in which women have been written over a lifetime, asking – are they fit for purpose? They rip up the rule book, ditching versions of self that have pinned them to the page. What emerges is a witty, raw, sometimes heart-wrenching invitation to inhabit this world in a new language.
Praise for Knee to Knee
Knees are a locus of articulation. Necessary for flexibility and movement. Intersectional. Knees inform our stance. In Knee to Knee two poets combine to expand the boundaries of ‘she’. She is plural, playful, sensual, and anarchic. She asserts fresh punctuation to (re)connect, to halt, to disrupt rigid attitudes. ‘[D]is-verbed’, her poems interrogate the limits of the female as defined by others and assimilated through upbringing, education, and language. Tropes of the ‘good girl’, decorum, silences around menstruation, sexuality, ageing, the ‘shoulds’ performed are incisively broken open. Vibrant juxtapositions flare against constrictions and constructions of selfhood, gendering, and idiom. Knee to Knee is vibrant, exciting, witty, and provocative – compelling reading. - Heidi Williamson
Knee to Knee is a thrillingly bold and passionate venture, a ‘together-poem’ where two poets merge to ‘make / space for us and our iteration(s)’. Coinages and resignified signs team here with energetic phrase-making and beautifully shaped silences to embody resistance to patriarchal constraints and other attempts to diminish human potential. The ‘arc and dip of self’ is both recorded but also importantly interrupted so that female voices can help each other soar. The result is a consistently exciting and thought-provoking collection, fantastically perceptive and alive with imagination. - John McCullough
‘This is just so good! Inventive, utterly original and the best example of true collaboration I’ve ever seen.’ - Ilse Pedler