Bath of Herbs is a beautifully crafted, honest and thoughtful first collection which explores the complexity of mixed-race, hybrid identities and relationships to the English and Welsh mountains, fells, rivers and shorelines from an ‘othered’, unmappable, positionality.
It celebrates and mourns the unspoken pain and joys of motherhood; of menstrual cycles, childbirth, tending to sick children with life-threatening illnesses, the death of mothers, love in all its myriad forms and the desire to escape the constraints of domestic and family life towards different kinds of freedoms. It also revisits the confusing world of childhood; the inexplicable actions of adults and the bullies who despise perceived difference.
“In this beautiful and moving debut collection, the death of a mother leads to profound encounters with the natural world in poems about curative plants, maternal care, and hiking and swimming in the epic outdoors.” — JASON ALLEN PAISANT
“These poems are so tender, exacting and precise, that I wanted to read them again and again, and finished reading them not knowing which I liked best: the one about the moon cup menses shame and or the one about the calabash breasts or the one about being mixed race.” — MONIQUE ROFFEY