Girlhood

by Julia Copus

WINNER OF THE DEREK WALCOTT PRIZE FOR POETRYJulia Copus's new collection, Girlhood , is a book of transgressed boundaries and seductive veneers. Restlessly inquisitive, it exposes the shifting power balance between things on the verge of becoming and the forces that threaten to destroy them.Reading these poems, we have the sense of encountering a series of filmic installations arranged by episode in a gallery. Lost, censored or disparaged voices speak out from secluded spaces and moments of hidden from within a professor's office and a deserted department store; from kitchens, bedrooms, hallways and upstairs windows; through changing weathers, fidgety shadows and the witching hour.Girlhood concludes with a sequence set in a psychiatric hospital that reimagines Jacques Lacan's treatment of his most famous case study, Marguerite Pantaine. This dramatic meeting of minds has us questioning who is the more delusional - doctor or like other victims in this exhilarating new collection, Marguerite may initially appear vanquished, but a closer look reveals how little of herself she has really surrendered.

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

First published March 19, 2019

About the author

Julia Copus was born in London, near to the Young Vic theatre, and now lives in Somerset. All three of her poetry collections, The Shuttered Eye, In Defence of Adultery and The World's Two Smallest Humans, are both Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She has won First Prize in the National Poetry Competition, the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (2010), and in 2012 was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry.

She also writes for radio; her first play, Eenie Meenie Macka Racka, was awarded the BBC's Alfred Bradley prize for best new radio playwright. She is an Advisory Fellow for the Royal Literary Fund, and in 2008 was made an Honorary Fellow at the University of Exeter.

Her third collection, The World's Two Smallest Humans, was published this year by Faber.

Reviews

[kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

twas fine .

[lily fizzle · Rating 3 out of 5]

this collection is conceptually amazing but I felt Copus's choices of language were often a bit predictable and simplistic, especially for such thematically interesting pieces. that being said, I did love her formal inventiveness and consistent use of annotating line breaks. my fave poems were 'So Long', 'Acts of Anger', 'Knife: An Interior Haunting', 'Consulting Room', and 'Casebook II'.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Copus's fourth collection is divided into two halves: the first containing a selection of poems that touch on a variety of different topics, including memories of lecherous professors, fractured relationships with family, and the vulnerability of childhood. Many of these poems are innovative in their style and structure, and full of vibrancy and energy. I particularly admired "The Great Unburned", which is a mirror poem or reverse poem from the perspective of "the witches you forgot to burn." It's full of movement and passion, containing memorable lines like

Back to our firelit dwellings we'll usher you,
back to the place where you thought we'd been silenced,
over the forests and down through the ages,
far from the cities, the towers, the golf course

I also admired "The Grievers", a poem about loss, and the many losses we face: "What we can't absorb we carry in us." The poem "A Thing Once It Has Happened" is interesting on various levels -- it's a narrative told out-of-sequence, about an encounter with a classics professor, and is full of the hints of abuse of power or sexual exploitation, but doesn't tell a direct narrative. We are left to infer, to wonder what really happened -- which puts us into the mind of the undergraduate who doesn't know how to react to what is happening to her. But at the same time, I found this lack of direct commentary created an emotional distance, and this poem didn't have the potency I was expecting.

The second half of the collection, called "Marguerite", is about Jacques Lacan and his patient, Marguerite Pantaine, who, in 1931, tried to stab an actress and, deemed mentally unwell, came into the care of the state. Poems appear from both the perspective of Lacan and of Marguerite, as well as a shadowy entity known as "inpatients". In these poems, I ran into the same problems I found in "A Thing Once It Has Happened", but I found them less successful. Though Copus is a poet of great skill and the craft that goes into her work deserves attention and admiration, these poems left me cold: I never got a real sense of Lacan, Marguerite, or the hospital where she is held. The experiences Copus is describing leave plenty of room for compassion, love and empathy -- and sometimes she finds these things, particularly in Marguerite's description of her stillborn daughter -- but too often the poems shy away from emotion and seem curiously detached from the events they describe.

I'm glad I read this collection, and it confirms for me that Copus is a very talented poet whose work I will certainly explore further.

[Lev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible! Another one of those random library finds, this time I hit gold. Copus writes so beautifully, shrouding her meaning in imagery but letting you read it so clearly at the same time. My favorite kind of poetry. In So Long and Wolfman Jack she does this great thing with slowing down a little moment and making it the anchor point for events past, present and future and The Grievers - oof (Look out into the street - we are everywhere: / on bikes, at bus-stops, among the crowds / of those who have not happened yet on grief). Not all of the poems quite got me; I had a lot of trouble with the very concept of Marguerite in the beginning, but even that ended up clicking for me, on some level.

And Any Ordinary Morning has my entire heart:

"[...]
Adolf Büker, it was not the soldier
in you but the lover who shaped my life.
I think of him now, the morning you left for war.
Your new young wife beside you doesn't know yet
how the story goes. Your final battle
tucked in the future still, she is laying the breakfast
unaware that already my sweetheart's grandmother
is safely landed inside her - meaning I live
not in some other world but here in this one
in which your great grandson returns each evening
at the end of both our working days, and the light
bounces off my glass any ordinary morning [...]"

[Mattea Gernentz · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In days where you were not, I went as the crazed / but duteous bee goes to its tasks, my words were moths / caught under glass, my thoughts fleet as a spring / shower and you were nowhere" (14).

Impeccable The Bell Jar vibes. I think this was a perfect read to undertake after my dissertation; I loved the way Copus explored the perception of a woman vs. what was happening interiorly. I could (and will) read "Creation Myth" and "Stories" over and over again.

God bless the Scottish National Poetry Library. #SealeyChallenge

"(or - yes - was drawn, for something did stir in me, inborn / or no, at the sight of you; you'll get the moment I mean / for my having told it so often: the breezy shiver / of birch leaves at your shoulder, your voice and the blue / of your jacket, the kindlier blue of your eyes), stepped, / as I've said, without thinking, onto the narrow / ridge of our beginning, and became" (Creation Myth, 15).

[Carlos Pascual · Rating 4 out of 5]

El poemario alterna temas cotidianos con otros más trascendentes. El conjunto arroja una imagen redonda y bastante conseguida. La autora referencia autores clásicos y los intercala con temas cotidianos (una de mis combinaciones preferidas). El tono es el adecuado (mi padre siempre dice que es lo más difícil de conseguir en poesía) y determinados poemas son particularmente originales (por ejemplo, el grupo de Lacan y su paciente).

Los mejores poemas son The Grievers y Acts of Anger.

¨in grief, the soul
distorts and forms a seal around the loss.
What we can´t absorb we carry in us,
a lumpish residue¨.

P.S. Girlhood ganó en 2020 el Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Lo mencionó al final porque no es que ganar un premio de poesía diga necesariamente nada sobre la calidad, visto lo visto, pero merecido en este caso.

[Rachel Hitch · Rating 5 out of 5]

i swear all my friends need to read this. i was in tears at points … her words hit like pillows in a pillow fight, they’re soft but all at once they feel so heavy. i cannot recommend this enough i’m going to have to find more of her work. the BEST poetry i have read in a very long time, wish i could give it a higher rating.

[Karolina · Rating 3 out of 5]

'The Grievers' is an impeccable poem... which I thought would set the tone for the rest of the book, but I found the collection reads quite cinematically, in glimpses, in various changing images, and while well written, it was difficult to find a main point, or a larger meaning in my mind. The concepts are interesting though, quite different to what everyone else is writing about.

[Jenni · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the most beautiful poems I've read, 'Love, Like Water', is by Julia Copus so I came in with some pretty high expectations. There were a few standouts in the collection (Waking Late, Telephone and How to eat an Ortolan) but the rest didn't grab me as much as I thought they would.

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably amazing. But it didn't mean a thing to me.

[Mark Sexton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Masterful poetry from a poet at the top of her game

[nishtha · Rating 1 out of 5]

1.5/5; give me more!!! she has the capacity i feel but its not all there in this collection.

[Ellie Breen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lacan section was the best.