Award-winning poet Abigail George takes you on a vivid contemporary odyssey in the poetic form of a prose poetry collection through psychological landscapes of her inner and outer world. In living with a diagnosed bipolar condition, George burns star bright and black-hole dark, but her writing has always remained, sustained, and mattered, giving us this rare eloquent and vital insight.
Abigail George is a poet, essayist, novelist, blogger, editor, playwright, and short story writer. She was the awarded the 2023 Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Prize for her poem, ‘In a Lonely Search for Walt Whitman and Chris Abani’, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and twice nominated for Best of the Net Award. Her latest book is Songs For Palestine: Struggle Poems. She blogs at African Renaissance and Mentally Sound.
Oh, God, what amazing poetry this is! Every poem walks you in a corridor that leads into the author’s subconscious spaces, revealing a shadowy world of bitterness, broken love and fragmented thoughts. George is able to produce a narrative poetry that utilises raw and deep-cutting images, fragmented stories and half-asleep-and-half-awake musings and reflections to weave a body of poetry that leaves the reader dazed, mouth-gaping and gasping for more.
- Dr Christopher Okemwa, Senior Lecturer, Kisii University, Kenya.
A lyrical, stream-of-consciousness dive into the writer’s experience of love, loss, hope and despair. It is a dive that stretches from her bedroom, to her community, to Palestine. The self and the world, past and present, are in contest. But from that contest comes the beauty of the book’s poetry. And that’s what it really is - poetry.
- Kevin Goddard.
Abigail’s writing is a treat, rich in imagery and metaphor. She crafts the kind of sentences you wish to bookmark and return to. In this short story, the chapters are offered up in splinters that read like captivating prose poems, often mirroring the protagonist’s fractured psyche, while creating an authentic visceral experience of the complex emotional landscape unfolding within.
- Adiela Akoo, South African Poet & Author.
A raw, emotional journey through heartbreak and longing. With visceral imagery that explores the pain of lost love, weaving themes of memory, grief, and self-discovery. George writes unflinchingly on the effects of mental illness on family dynamics, and the fragility of the human psyche. A powerful work that will resonate with readers who have known darkness and the struggle to find light.
- Thobeka Kenene.
A brave, claustrophobic, and ultimately transcendent piece of literature. It is a
lullaby“ for the broken and a manifesto for the power of the written word. Abigail George proves once again that for the marginalised and the ”mad“, writing is not just a career - it is a holy act of reclamation.” - Henry Lombard.
A haunting and deeply confessional work, Abigail George’s poetry moves through memory, illness, and longing with lyrical intensity. What emerges is a fragile yet courageous portrait of a mind searching for love, meaning, and survival in the aftermath of emotional devastation.
- Tuoyo Palmer, poet and educator.
South African writer Abigail George discovers kinship with the griefs of the broader world while processing her life through streams of consciousness. Mental health and wellness become recurring themes in the work, rendered effectively through the raw, nonlinear poetry that echoes her thoughts.
- Cristina Deptula.
The ZamaShort imprint series is solely focused on the amazing powerhouse that is the short story. We give each short story its own publication so that it may be read and enjoyed…