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Another Rive Gauche collection!

What she also did was... poems about our mothers
Publication/launch date:
18th November 2007
£7.95
ISBN 978 0 9530370 1 8
55 pages

In 1997/8 Rive Gauche produced a successful and highly regarded anthology. Edited by Gill Hague, Shelley Allan & PVT West, it contained work from over seventy women writing and performing poems in Bristol in 1990s. It was the first of its kind and sold out.

Rive Gauche is now publishing another collection, this time to commemorate, primarily, the mothers of two former Rive Gauche editors – Gill Hague & Pat VT West - but the mothers of 9 other guest poets, too.

You may already have heard of Rive Gauche, a regular poetry platform for and occasional publisher of, poems by women performing/writing in Bristol. Set up by Pat VT West in the early 1990s, it was the result of the residency for women’s poetry, funded by Avon Poetry Festival (now called Poetry Can), that she and poet Rachel Bentham had recently undertaken.

In What she also did was... poets enter difficult emotional territory and respond to the complexities of mother/daughter relationships. A smaller, less ambitious Rive Gauche venture than before, nevertheless this is another quality product of the customary high standard people expect from Rive Gauche.

Copies of the book are available from Pat’s executor.

Gill Hague
Professor and director of the Violence Against Women Research Group, University of Bristol. Has worked for more than thirty years on gender violence with activist projects
in many countries, including South Africa and India.
PVT West
MA, University of Bristol, poetry/performance activist. Has directed Poetry&Words since she began it at the Glastonbury Festival in 1992. A performer and poet since 1970, is also one third of Riff Raff Poets.
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