‘This dazzling series shows that if the barriers can be vaulted there is true beauty to be had from the lesser-walked streets of literature. These works are both nourishing and inspiring, and a gift to any reader.’—Kerry Hudson

The experience of living with the adventures and griefs of bipolar disorder forms the focus for this remarkable collection of poetry.

Ridout uses the language of the fairy story and visceral images of the female form and femininity to explore how personal trauma and instability makes their mark on the wider world. Different voices and twisted accounts of the body and mind are combined with the mythological and the esoteric to create striking, beautifully unsettling and unusual poems—each a celebration of the extremes of being human.