Egg/Shell

The Poetry Book Society Spring Choice 2024

A Telegraph Book of the Year 2024

Winner of the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2025

‘It is hard to hurt and then explain the hurt away / so as not to hurt anyone. But have you seen / my life?’ (‘Child of Lir’)

The lives depicted by Victoria Kennefick alter, shatter and recombine
in stunning monologues, innovative hybrid forms and piercing lyrics:
her second book Egg/Shell is a diptych, a double album, which
explores early motherhood and miscarriage, and the impact of a spouse's
gender transition and the dissolution of a marriage. Acclaimed as one of
the boldest poetic voices to emerge in recent years, Kennefick, in the
follow-up to her best-selling Eat or We Both Starve, breaks new ground with generosity, emotional complexity, formal ingenuity and wit.