Stick Woman by Jean Stevens turns the constraints of an ageing body into a record of restless imaginative motion. The walking stick that gives the collection its title is at once an emblem of frailty and, reimagined as a Chaplinesque dance partner, a means of defiance, while many of the poems undertake their journeys in the mind, where weather and terrain obey the walker rather than the reverse. Stevens moves between the Yorkshire Dales and an Australia mapped through Aboriginal songlines, between domestic memory and the dead who keep returning: a father, a grandmother, a young lover. Stick Woman is a collection alert to anger as readily as to wonder.
 
ABOUT Jean Stevens:
Jean Stevens’ poems have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers including The Bridport Prizewinners Anthology. They have also been broadcast on BBC Radio Three, Radio Four and Radio Leeds, and have been shortlisted and highly commended in many competitions. Her plays have been performed at Derby Playhouse, The Edinburgh Festival, Harrogate Theatre and West Yorkshire Playhouse. As a professional actor she has credits for stage, radio, film and television.