Jane Burn Knihy

One of the voices rarely heard in modern poetry is that of working-class women, in terms of both the impact of major historical events on their identity, health and happiness, as well as their day-to-day experiences of work, men and motherhood. In this remarkable, powerful collection, Jane Burn has told her story and more, in a series of poems which are both personal and political. She has also illustrated the poems with a beautifully imaginative series of illustrations, which add depth and detail to the collection. This is a vital collection for our time. Are things worse than the 80s? Have a read, then decide — you won’t be disappointed. As one of the titles says: these poems are ‘Sentences to Survive In’.

Jane Burn’s new poetry collection Be Feared is a captivating reclamation of self, sisterhood and love, encountering everything from the Snow Queen and the morning song of chainsaws to myths, monsters, plagues and infernos. Acknowledging fear, this book embraces discovery, moving from ‘beware!’ and ‘bereft’ towards a becoming – a process of translation and transformation, of finding a voice radiant with both curses and psalms. Rebellious, bloody, and encroached upon by violence, Burn’s poetry examines survival, abuse and healing. Intensely imaginative, these incantatory poems rework fairy tale and folklore, invoke a divine carnival of sexuality and wild nature, and hold up enchanted mirrors to the everyday truths of being a working-class autistic woman, daring to become, claiming her own magnificent, unstoppable fluency and spell-making power.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world after the Second Great Flood, the book presents an ethnographic exploration of a tribal culture's fragmented narratives and lost voices. It delves into their myths, rituals, and customs, revealing the intertwined personal stories of survivors living among the remnants of a collapsed civilization. Through the unsettling tapestry created by Jane Burn and Bob Beagrie, readers encounter the struggles of a community grappling with themes of endurance and extinction in a hauntingly familiar future.

Fleet is a 'weltersong' of desire and otherness. An epic saga of shapeshifting enchantment and an all too familiar drama of longing, banishment, abuse, survival and love. Jane Burn brings her unique vision, wild wordplay and stunning image-making to the evocation of the folklore of the Witch-Hare, and the voices of Motherdoe, Fleet and Daughterhare with the full force of mythic tragedy and Ovidian metamorphosis. Bob Beagrie, poet

The Apothecary of Flight is a heady flight into the art of poetry itself: its vital importance as a tool for expression; for understanding and translating the self; for articulating the sheer force and joy of poetry and the way, for a person with autism, it can hold and celebrate both the smallest and weightiest of life's experiences.