Body Memory
Meriwether Clarke's full-length debut, Body Memory, narrates the history of a body intent on remembering and overcoming the violence of misogyny. Faced with trauma and loss, Clarke's speakers turn inward, transforming the act of personal exploration into a searing reckoning with the punishing limitations of gender expectations.

In a world where women are constantly evaluated yet never fully seen, the anxiety of potential harm is omnipresent. Startling and evocative imagery paints pointed metaphors for such suffering: desert earth in Arizona swallows itself amidst a damaging drought; cottonwood saplings wait, rooted to the ground, for young lovers to carve hearts into their bark; rivers exist only to "turn into lakes."

Woven through these portrayals are meditations on the inherent toll of remembrance and how it both defines and confines identity. The collection's first poem poses the question, "without memory/what can there be/of days?" Clarke gestures toward answers in her depictions of the connection between girlhood and womanhood as intimate, unbreakable, and-too often-deeply sorrowful.

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Body Memory
Meriwether Clarke's full-length debut, Body Memory, narrates the history of a body intent on remembering and overcoming the violence of misogyny. Faced with trauma and loss, Clarke's speakers turn inward, transforming the act of personal exploration into a searing reckoning with the punishing limitations of gender expectations.

In a world where women are constantly evaluated yet never fully seen, the anxiety of potential harm is omnipresent. Startling and evocative imagery paints pointed metaphors for such suffering: desert earth in Arizona swallows itself amidst a damaging drought; cottonwood saplings wait, rooted to the ground, for young lovers to carve hearts into their bark; rivers exist only to "turn into lakes."

Woven through these portrayals are meditations on the inherent toll of remembrance and how it both defines and confines identity. The collection's first poem poses the question, "without memory/what can there be/of days?" Clarke gestures toward answers in her depictions of the connection between girlhood and womanhood as intimate, unbreakable, and-too often-deeply sorrowful.

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Body Memory

Body Memory

by Meriwether Clarke
Body Memory

Body Memory

by Meriwether Clarke

Overview

Meriwether Clarke's full-length debut, Body Memory, narrates the history of a body intent on remembering and overcoming the violence of misogyny. Faced with trauma and loss, Clarke's speakers turn inward, transforming the act of personal exploration into a searing reckoning with the punishing limitations of gender expectations.

In a world where women are constantly evaluated yet never fully seen, the anxiety of potential harm is omnipresent. Startling and evocative imagery paints pointed metaphors for such suffering: desert earth in Arizona swallows itself amidst a damaging drought; cottonwood saplings wait, rooted to the ground, for young lovers to carve hearts into their bark; rivers exist only to "turn into lakes."

Woven through these portrayals are meditations on the inherent toll of remembrance and how it both defines and confines identity. The collection's first poem poses the question, "without memory/what can there be/of days?" Clarke gestures toward answers in her depictions of the connection between girlhood and womanhood as intimate, unbreakable, and-too often-deeply sorrowful.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781963115628
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Publication date: 10/07/2025
Pages: 102
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.24(d)

About the Author

Meriwether Clarke's poetry has appeared in Best New Poets, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Daily, Seneca Review, Sixth Finch, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. A graduate of UC Irvine's Programs in Writing and Northwestern University, she has been supported by the Vermont Studio Center, the Community of Writers, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her chapbook, twenty-first century woman, was released by Dancing Girl Press in 2019. She currently lives in Santa Barbara, California.
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