The Strange Egg: A Symptoms Diary

By Kirstie Millar and Hannah Mumby

'Doctor, I had a terrible dream.
In my dream I saw my own body, and I saw what you will do to it.'
A woman is faced, month after month, with the birth of a strange egg. Her doctor asks that she take notes on her symptoms, documenting black blood clots as big as pennies, winking stars in her eyes, and relentless pain. As the woman waits for aid from her doctor, she begins to have strange premonitions of what will be done to her body. The egg, meanwhile, is watchful and demanding. Impatient.
The Strange Egg is as gorgeous as it is horrifying. Highly original, it challenges long-held beliefs that people of marginalised genders are unreliable and irrational witnesses to our own bodies.
The Strange Egg is a luminous gothic prose poem that delves into the mythopoeic to express injustice at the hands of abusive medical systems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Release date: Jan 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781915628039

Kirstie Millar

Kirstie Millar is a writer based in Manchester. In 2017 she founded Ache, an intersectional feminist press publishing writing and art on illness, health, bodies and pain. She completed her MA in Creative Writing at UEA and was a recipient of the Ink, Sweat and Tears Scholarship. Her writing has been published by Prototype, 3 of Cups Press and has been commended by Penguin’s WriteNow programme in 2020 and the UEA New Forms Awards in 2021.

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COPYRIGHT

First published in the UK in 2023 by The Emma Press Ltd.

Text © Kirstie Millar 2023.

Artwork © Hannah Mumby 2023.

All rights reserved.

The right of Kirstie Millar and Hannah Mumby to be identified as the creators of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978-1-915628-02-2

EPUB ISBN 978-1-915628-03-9

A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the UK by The Holodeck, Birmingham.

theemmapress.com

[e-mail]

Birmingham, UK

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MENSTRUAL PHASE

(bleeding)

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1.

Picture this: white fawn, spotless and new, running and suddenly punctured by a particularly sharp branch. Mother’s salty tongue licking the wound clean.

Three drops of crimson blood steaming in the snow. Blood is terribly revealing. Blood for the hunters to see and also