Matronymics

In her second collection of poems Kate Ashton examines woman's estate from the warring perspectives of creativity and procreativity. Born into her biological destiny, woman is harnessed at adolescence to procreative necessity; she may refuse, she must choose. But what if the unconscious leads inexorably towards another equally all-consuming fate, as artist?

The overwhelming gravitas, beauty and mystery of motherhood is presented in all its extraordinary, paradoxical reality. Here is an often...