An exciting and eagerly anticipated full-collection debut from a hugely
talented poet. "Exuberantly raw and playful, Samantha Walton's first
collection Self Heal engages passionately with questions of identity,
consumerism, gender, and humanity's relationship to the natural
environment. To self heal means to live amid a dizzying array of worldly
demands, requiring all the abundance of humour, compassion, and
intelligence this debut has to offer."
Carrie Etter
"Here it is, the long-awaited collection by Samantha Walton! Self Heal
is infused with passion and politics -- you could say that the poems are
love poems, but unlike any you've read. With exhilarating wit, Walton
declares the exchanges, vital or aggrieved, between the living stuff of
the world: 'the swabbed mystery of the connection/ between your body &
the gross/ understatement of your environment'. These brilliant, acutely
beautiful, deliciously mordant poems will tendril their way into your
psyche." Lila Matsumoto
"You can open up your head and rub these poems on your brain when you
want to feel better about the wreck: they're "heal" poems, as the title
says: Samantha Walton's Self Heal opens to what blows between working
streets and windy sky: "under the scolded / boots of the Poor Law /
press the kissed field" and out comes love "to rub a mind across a
meadow" in the company of saucy language bodies saying "call me / x"."
Lisa Samuels, author of Symphony for Human Transport and Foreign
Native
