This startlingly original debut delves into the surreal, concealed moments of a young womanhood. Helen Quah’s voice is in part a deep-calling into the complex distances between mother and daughter, in part a twisted venture into the contradictions of romance. Dog Woman, named after the series of artworks by Paula Rego, contorts language, opening up a playfully dark and often humorous space of the fantastical and otherwise unexplained.

‘This extraordinary collection of poems is an archeology of shame, discomfort, unease. Quah’s controlled poetic lines hold utmost tension as she explores love, sexuality, desire, and the fraught emotional hinterlands of an orientalised female body.’ — Jason Allen-Paisant

‘In these beautiful, uncanny, hot-blooded tableaus Quah offers an ominous symbolism of life as an unresolvable drama, the sound and contrast up a little too loud for safety or comfort. Reading her lines felt like following a corridor to its end only to find a door opening onto a further corridor/door/corridor/door…only these corridors are lives, places, families, feelings; this way Quah has you wandering through your own interior as a voyeur and hostage of your own imagination.’ — Jack Underwood

Format: mobi (suitable for Kindle ereader devices)

Also available in ePub and in print.