Man-Handled (Recent Work Press, 2020)

Man-handled, Melinda Smith’s seventh poetry collection, includes the found-text chapbook Listen, bitch plus new work from the last three years. Its central concern is gendered violence, both verbal and physical. These poems also extend their gaze to violences perpetrated in the names of colonialism, nationalism and capitalism. While this is Smith’s angriest book, it still takes time to celebrate moments of connection and wonder.

‘Intense and powerfully focused, dark yet also bright with urgency, and full of formal inventiveness’ – Jill Jones