Edited by Rachel Piercey and Emma Wright.

A powerful and moving collection of poems about motherhood, from a variety of perspectives.

“My mama wraps me in an aguayo,

packs me into its colours as tightly

as mince meat tucked into an empanada.

She pulls up her pollera, then throws

me from my aunt’s seventh floor window.

She does this because I’ll fall anyway.

 

I am alone with only an open window

and seven floors to fall for company.

I am falling towards my brother in London.

I am falling for the sweet-seller’s baby.

I am following her down the street as a I fall.

I am as small as my mother’s black doll

whose head broke off and never got fixed.

I will always always never not fall.”

 

– ‘Dreams of Falling’, Katherine Lockton