When the Muses are sacked, what are we to do? The Muses who inspire poetry, astronomy, history and daily living bring their song and dance into present-day political struggles. These Muses are for rebellion.

Susan Hawthorne’s poems span millennia of resistance by women. The earth itself is implicated. She writes about women’s bodies, how they are used, abused and celebrated in birthing, in sexual pleasure, in grief, in imagining. She draws on stories from ancient and contemporary India, from Greece and Rome, through language, storytelling and translation.