Conquest

By Zoe Brigley

Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Moving from the violent to the erotic, Conquest describes women questing to rediscover their own desire. Split into three sections, the collection begins in the 19th-century England of the Brontësisters, travels through the vast continent of the USA, and finally finds the answer to women's longing in a walled garden in the decorous city of Paris. In America and Europe, the heroines struggle against the conquest of bodies and of place, facing issues like miscarriage, lost love and domestic violence. Consolation comes, however, by discovering their own desires and independence. The collection begins with 'My Last Rochester', a sequence devoted to the Brontësisters and their struggle to meet expectations of them as women, lovers and wives. The English Gothic gives way later to a story of American immigration in the title-sequence. 'Conquest' pans to the wide open spaces of the USA, where pioneering women still quest to satisfy the sweetness of their own longings. Such satisfaction is only unravelled by retreating to a walled garden in the final sequence, 'The Lady and the Unicorn'. Original in its use of form, Conquest questions the brutal aspects of Western society, especially violence against women and the colonial mind-set. Inspired by the tapestries at the Musée Cluny in Paris and the artwork of Victoria Brookland, the poems visualise women rediscovering their own pleasures, desires, loves. Bridging the personal and the universal, Conquest offers a compelling vision of healing and consolation. 'Conquest is a fascinating study of women's sexuality' -Pascale Petit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: Mar 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781780370545

Zoe Brigley

Zoë Brigley is the author of three books of poetry published by Bloodaxe: Hand & Skull (2019), Conquest (2012), and The Secret (2007). All three are UK Poetry Book Society Recommendations. She also has a collection of nonfiction essays: Notes from a Swing State: Writing from Wales and America (Parthian, 2019). Her writing appears in Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Review, The Chicago Review, Australian Book Review, PN Review, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Poetry Wales, and elsewhere. She also researches literature, film, trauma, and violence against women and minorities. She co-edited the academic volume Feminism, Literature, and Rape Narratives (with Sorcha Gunne). Her research articles appear in The Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Formations, Feminist Media Studies, Gender and Education, and Contemporary Women’s Writing. She podcasts on anti-violence advocacy issues at SinisterMyth.com . She won an Eric Gregory Award for the best British poets under 30, and she was listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize for the best international writers under 35. A native of Wales, she now lives in Ohio, where she works as an Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University. She is a contributing editor and committee member for Wales’ leading poetry journal, Poetry Wales.

Book preview

ZOË BRIGLEY

CONQUEST

Poetry Book Society Recommendaiton

Moving from the violent to the erotic, Conquest describes women questing to rediscover their own desire. Split into three sections, the collection begins in the 19th-century England of the Brontë sisters, travels through the vast continent of the USA, and finally finds the answer to women’s longing in a walled garden in the decorous city of Paris. In America and Europe, the heroines struggle against the conquest of bodies and of place, facing issues like miscarriage, lost love and domestic violence. Consolation comes, however, by discovering their own desires and independence.

The collection begins with ‘My Last Rochester’, a sequence devoted to the Brontë sisters and their struggle to meet expectations of them as women, lovers and wives. The English Gothic gives way later to a story of American immigration in the title-sequence. ‘Conquest’ pans to the wide open spaces of the USA, where pioneering women still quest to satisfy the sweetness of their own longings. Such satisfaction is only unravelled by retreating to a walled garden in the final sequence, ‘The Lady and the Unicorn’.

Original in its use of form, Conquest questions the brutal aspects of Western society, especially violence against women and the colonial mind-set. Inspired by the tapestries at the Musée Cluny in Paris and the artwork of Victoria Brookland, the poems visualise women rediscovering their own pleasures, desires, loves. Bridging the personal and the universal, Conquest offers a compelling vision of healing and consolation.

‘Conquest is a fascinating study of women’s sexuality’ – Pascale Petit

COVER PAINTING:

Hawk by Victoria Brookland

For my mother and grandmothers

simply for being the women they are.

I had a feeling that Pandora’s box contained the mysteries of woman’s sensuality, so different from a man’s and for which man’s language was so inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored.

ANAÏS NIN, The Delta of Venus

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

MY LAST ROCHESTER

VICTORIA BROOKLAND The life that tied too tight escapes

My Last Rochester

Behind the Looking Glass

The Bell Confessing

Hair Bracelet

The Dispensary

The Scent Bottle

Night-sea Journey

Passage

Diptych for a Pear Tree

Diptych after Anne Brontë

The Mourner

Daughter

The Fir Tree Prisoner

The Tin Soldier

The Plum Tree Suicide

The Spinner

The Adventuress

CONQUEST

VICTORIA BROOKLAND The peregrine is stronger

Glyph

Catskin

My Spinalonga Passion

Atlas-eating

The Mandrake Baby

Like Tamzene Donner did

Farming Florida

Love and the Orchid

Pennsylvania Winter

All of which are American dreams

Arches

The Heart of the Sorrowing Coyote

Infertility

The Guide

The Angel and the Subway

The Love of a Husband

The Blue Rose

THE LADY AND THE UNICORN

A sequence after the tapestries at Musée de Cluny, Paris

VICTORIA BROOKLAND I know how fervently then to love

Prologue

I Behind Orchard Walls

II The Myth of the Unicorn

III Tasting