In Girl, Rebecca Goss considers the emotional and physical connections women make to the world around them. The poems interrogate and celebrate female identity and experience, and the dynamics of family and friendship.

Girl picks up where Goss’s acclaimed second collection, Her Birth-a work of “immense grace’ (Poetry London)-left off, and opens onto new territory. It is an authentic study of girlhood, and it deals candidly with the physical and mental quakes that follow illness and trauma. From a woman struck by lightning to a baby who understands shadows, Goss navigates the real and the imagined with equal flair. At the heart of the collection is a distinctive, sensual series of poems responding to the work of the artist Alison Watt: the result is a fearless exploration of the female body and female desire.