Breaking a Mare by Christina Thatcher

‘In Christina Thatcher’s vivid new collection, the farm offers wildness and wonder to a young girl, as she witnesses bodies broken and made strong again. Breaking a Mare shows us that the breaking can be part of the survival.’ – Rebecca Goss 

‘What a precision feat this book pulls off.  On the one hand, these are poems of sleek physicality – of clasp and bit and buckle and braid – with shrewd things to say about the tyranny of polish and perfection. At the same time, they’re intimately attuned to the charged spaces we occupy and the roles we perform within them, whether it be a rodeo arena, a haunted hayride, a school playground or an empty kitchen...  I am, like one of her riders, lovestruck quick for all of it.’ – Abigail Parry  
 
‘An exceptional writer, a poet who refuses to stay quiet. Her speaker has galloped out of darkness, urging us now to consider: what has been breaking us, what is it that we can tame, what wildness can we harness?’ – clare e. potter 

It’s summer and the flies are back
and your mare is wild-eyed and uneasy
tossing her head as she trots, jolting
as trucks arrive in the driveway, you
keep kicking, you want to canter:
come on girl, let’s go and then
she does let you go— 

Breaking a Mare is an investigation of silence, goodness and girlhood. It invites readers into the barn, the sawdust mill, the rodeo arena. These poems expose the hard work women do on farms, the loss of rural landscapes and the role death can play in these spaces. They ask what it means to be good in the face of physical, emotional and ecological threat. Ultimately, these poems want to know what breaks us and what makes us stronger.

Christina Thatcher grew up between a farm and a ranch house in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. She won a Marshall Scholarship to study in the UK and now lectures at Cardiff University. Her poetry and short stories have been widely published in literary magazines, including Ambit, Poetry Wales, The North and The Poetry Review. She has published two earlier collections, More than you were and How to Carry Fire. Christina has toured internationally, reading her work in the UK, USA, Canada, Costa Rica, Switzerland and Romania. She lives with her gardener husband, Rich, and their cat, Miso.

Published 3rd April 2025. Available for pre-order.