Boy, Mother

Boy/Mother is a deeply moving exploration of a mother's relationship with her son who has a long-term mental illness. In innovative forms the poems evoke the day-to-day depredations of illness, psychiatric treatment and societal attitudes and yet the thread that runs through the collection is love. – Jane Clarke

Caroline Bracken's poems have been published in The North, Poetry Wales, Poetry News, Gutter, New England Review, the Irish Times, the Honest Ulsterman, Belfield Literary Review, Poetry Jukebox and elsewhere. She won the 2023 Renard Press Kinship Poetry Competition and has been a finalist in the Manchester Poetry Prize, Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Festival Poetry Contest and Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize. One of her poems has been nominated for the 2024 Forward Prize for Best Single Poem by The Poetry Society UK. Her work has been supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and DLR Arts Office.