“In her new pamphlet, Zoë Brigley explores the animistic energies of the wolf. Via the medium of a long-distance love affair, she weaves a web of associations around female sexuality, and around the varied ways women are scolded and scorned for their sexuality. She shows us that the archetypal figure of the wolf has many aspects, is not merely the ravening wolf, but the nurturing mythical wolves who raise an  abandoned child. The poet speaks movingly of her own sons as wolf-cubs.

“The sense of a voice speaking late at night and texting across time-zones to a listener both loved and trusted is beautifully and movingly held. While one lover sleeps, the other is awake, and this distancing underlines the pain of separation.

“Legend is drawn upon with an exact touch while the shadow of a former and broken relationship haunts the pages. Using all the resonances of wolf, the poet follows the knowledge path that pain and challenge unroll before her.

“In these courageous and insightful poems, the Lycanthrope stands for a core region where love is a transformation/restoration of the self; it reminds us that the natural world, however despoiled by humans, is our key to renewal and understanding and to being understood. These are telling and profoundly-realised poems.”

- Penelope Shuttle

30pp