Femenismo

Joanne Limburg was born in London in 1970, and studied Philosophy at Cambridge. She has since gained an MA in Psychoanalytic Studies, worked as an Associate Lecturer for the Open University, and was the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Magdalen College, Cambridge, from 2008 to 2010. She won an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry in 1998, and her first book, Femenismo (Bloodaxe Books, 2000), was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Her second collection, Paraphernalia (Bloodaxe Books, 2007), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Her third, The Autistic Alice, was published by Bloodaxe in 2017. Her other books include The Woman Who Thought Too Much (Atlantic Books, 2010), a memoir about OCD, anxiety and poetry; Bookside Down: poems for the modern, discerning cyber-kid (Salt Publishing, 2013), an anthology for younger readers; and one novel, A Want of Kindness: a novel of Queen Anne (Atlantic Books, 2015).

That poetry collections should often outsell their shabby relatives – novels – is justified by Joanne Limburg’s first. For years now, I have believed Limburg brilliantly pushes the emotional and intellectual poetic buttons we all recognise: family, gender, bereavement, Giacometti and wolf whistles! Often mercurial, wry, mysterious or very funny, these uncluttered poems witness a deeply talented, often profound voice at work.