We're looking forward to this digital road trip to coincide with the launch of How to Carry Fire, the second poetry collection by Christina Thatcher. Buckle up and join us for the ride!
In the mean time you can catch up with all that Christina has been up to on her own blog, with her latest entry: 'Proofs, Previews, Pre-Orders':
'I submitted my PhD on February 4th and since then I have been spending my time catching up on sleep and ‘decompressing’. This deserves a whole blog post of its own which I hope to write after my Viva in May. For now, I am enjoying having space in my brain again and time to do things I love without any I-should-be-working-on-the-PhD guilt.
'Submitting my thesis has also given me time to turn my full attention to another exciting milestone: the publication of my second poetry collection, How to Carry Fire. This collection considers fire in both its physical and metaphorical forms, exploring the ways it can destroy and cleanse. These poems are close to my heart and speak to issues of family addiction, home-burning and building as well as anxiety, passion and hope.'
Read the blog in full on Christina's website
How to Carry Fire was born from the ashes of family addiction. Beginning with the burning down of her childhood home, Thatcher explores how firecan both destroy and cleanse. Her work recognises embers everywhere: in farmhouses, heroin needles, poisonous salamanders.
Thatcher reveals how fire is internalised and disclosed through anxiety, addiction, passion and love. Underneath and among the flames runs the American and Welsh landscapes – locations which, like fire itself, offer up experiences which mesmerise, burn and purify. This poignant second collection reminds us of how the most dangerous and volatile fires can forge us – even long after the flames have died down.
Shortlisted for the Bare Fiction Debut Poetry Collection Competition in 2015 and a winner in the Terry Hetherington Award for Young Writers in 2016, Christina Thatcher’s poetry and short stories have featured in over 50 publications including The London Magazine, Planet Magazine, And Other Poems, Acumen and The Interpreter’s House. Her first collection, More than you were, was published by Parthian Books in 2017.
