When I Think of My Body as a Horse by Wendy Pratt

When I Think of My Body as a Horse is about trauma, recovery and the powerful, animal instincts embedded in the act of creating a family. These poems explore motherhood and body identity within the context of baby loss, when there is no ‘rainbow baby’ to add closure to the narrative.

These are spine-tingling, heart-stopping, life-affirming poems. Wendy Pratt explores the flimsy boundary between the animal and the human, places where ‘a whole / dark hearted life might erupt’ at any second. Her writing is ‘giddy with instinct’, compelling and raw. She exposes some of the last silent places of motherhood, losses which can leave women excluded and she finds beauty and hope even in the shadows cast by grief.’ – Helen Mort

Visceral experiences acutely observed. These poems hiss with animal motility. – Michael Stewart

In the “wild-world” of Wendy Pratt’s poetry, the body can become a horse or a hare, a flock of pigeons or a mermaid. These poems are transformative in every sense of the word – exploring how language contains and changes grief and how the natural world can help us survive terrible loss. They are both heart-breaking and life-affirming, threaded through with love, concerned with survival and held together by powerful and startling imagery. Any reader cannot help but be transformed by these poems once they encounter them. – Kim Moore