Knee to Knee
In this ground-breaking collaboration, Elvire Roberts and Rachel Goodman question the ways in which women have been written over a lifetime, asking – are they fit for purpose?
They rip up the rule book, ditching versions of self that have pinned them to the page. What emerges is a witty, raw, sometimes heart-wrenching invitation to inhabit this world in a new language.
Knee to Knee is a thrillingly bold and passionate venture.
Energetic phrase-making and beautifully shaped silences embody resistance to patriarchal constraints and other attempts to diminish human potential.
A consistently exciting and thought-provoking collection, fantastically perceptive and alive with imagination.
John McCullough
In Knee to Knee two poets combine to expand the boundaries of ‘she’. She is plural, playful, sensual, and anarchic. She asserts fresh punctuation to (re)connect, to halt, to disrupt rigid attitudes. ‘[D]is-verbed’, her poems interrogate the limits of the female as defined by others. Compelling reading.
Heidi Williamson
Rachel Goodman
Formerly an actor and BBC presenter, Rachel moved back to her native Norfolk coast 28 years ago to raise a family and to write. In 2017 she graduated with distinction from the MA in Creative Writing: Poetry at UEA (University of East Anglia) where she also received the Brian Heiser Memorial Scholarship.
Her poems have been published in Magma, Aesthetica, Under the Radar, Finished Creatures, The Alchemy Spoon, Ink Sweat & Tears, Lighthouse Journal, Fenland Poetry Journal, Tears in the Fence. She was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize 2017 and 2021.
Her first book, Knee to Knee, a collaboration with poet Elvire Roberts is published by Dialect Press.
She is currently writing about grief, the astonishment of loss, coastal erosion and where we place body and memory when the ground has gone from beneath our feet.
Elvire Roberts
Elvire Roberts is a poet from the LGBTQ+ community, based in Nottingham, UK. She works as an interpreter between British Sign Language and English, with a background in other languages. Elvire writes from a physiological reimagining of emotion, often through the animal, vegetable and mineral. Her poems have appeared in publications including 14 Magazine, Dark Mountain, Finished Creatures, Magma, Reliquiae, The Rialto, Tentacular and the Candlestick Press anthology Ten Poems About Getting Older.