By Rebecca Bilkau
\nISBN 978-1-9999728-7-5<\/p>\n
SOLD OUT<\/strong><\/p>\n In this powerful sequence of poems, Rebecca Bilkau writes from first hand experience of illegitimacy, its effects on both parent and child and the complex ways it has featured in her and her mother\u2019s life. The social stigma of the age she was born into may give rise to a healthy disdain but, above all, these are poems of reconciliation and celebration, \u2018the wanted unwanted child\u2019 affirming survival and fulfilment.<\/p>\n Rebecca Bilkau\u2019s previous collections are Weather Notes<\/em> (Oversteps Books), Choosing New Omens<\/em> (Wayleave), Instructions for a Quiet Life<\/em> (Oversteps). She is co-founder and managing editor of Beautiful Dragons Poetry Collaborations. Her cycle of poems The Blessed Round<\/em> formed the libretto for a cantata of the same name composed by Helen Roe. Rebecca divides her time between Lower Saxony and Cumbria.<\/p>\n \u201cThe pamphlet startled me with its imagery, its honesty and raw emotions. I felt for both the single mothers, and for the child who imagines her dad as \u2018a spectacular spy, a tsar on the run\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 Sue Wallace-Shaddad, Sphinx<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe narration of events in the poet\u2019s life-story is powerful but this sequence is most stunning when it goes out-wide to consider both the essence of social stigma and, most unusually, the very stuff of life in children who do not, or are not allowed to survive…This is the kind of writing that springs up from truth seeking, making an honest narration also a meditation.\u201d Dilys Wood, Artemis.<\/p>\n