My Iron Spine

A new poetry book with Brontë connections has just been launched in New Zealand: My Iron Spine by Helen Rickerby, published by Headworx Publishers.

My Iron Spine
Helen Rickerby
October 2008
86 pages
ISBN 978-0-473-13596-6

The things that give us strength are often the same things that suffocate or cage us.

Empress Elisabeth's iron spine was her corset, tightly laced, constricting her but giving her backbone. Reclusive poet Emily Dickinson found caged comfort in her room. Ada Byron's mother tried corseting her with numbers, to counteract the madness she may have inherited from her father.
Other characters in the poems of Helen Rickerby's new collection My Iron Spine, including the poet herself, find 'iron spines' in family, love, society, isolation, religion, knowledge and radiation.
The first section weaves an autobiographical narrative, while the second exquisitely brings to life the stories and voices of women from history. The two combine in the final section, where the poet sunbathes with Joan of Arc, goes swimming with Virginia Woolf and parties with Katherine Mansfield.
The poems in this original and playful collection resonate and connect with each other, building a coherent whole greater than the sum of its parts.

The book contains the poem Passion which can be read on the author's blog Winged Ink:

Passion

A curmudgeonly male critic once said
that Emily Bronte was
clearly a lesbian

‘It’s irrefutable,’ he said
because her words were
so passionate

therefore she was a woman
of strong sexual desire
She never married, never had a boyfriend

and so
obviously
was gay

*

I imagine Emily
with a series of lovers
taking off each other’s
empire lines in
discreet hollows
on the chilly moors
Emily wearing scarlet, but oh
not any more

I imagine the love letters
the fights, things
may have been thrown because
when one has such passion...

*

Emily lived with her sisters
for her thirty-one years
‘She never
made a friend,’ said Charlotte

What to do
with all that passion

Categories: Books, Poetry