Earwig Country
Earwig Country
Angela Topping
Paperback
"Beautiful things have inner horrors
I learned to be wary of."
Angela Topping’s new collection balances darkness with light: the beauty of the flower, the earwig within. Themes of mental health and memory are played out against the superstition that earwigs can burrow in through the ear and eat the brain. The German word ohrworm means earworm: something replaying in the mind.
Another theme is the mortality of the human body. Nature struggles, yet its beauty still prevails. Topping explores coming of age, family, bereavement, and how women are represented in life and literature. These poems have their own music, and appeal to both the senses and the intellect. They explore what it feels like to be human in a troubled world.
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Imprint: Valley Press
Published: May 2024
ISBN: 9781915606228
Catalogue no: VP0224
Page count: 120
Trim size: 216 x 140 mm
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Praise for Earwig Country:
"Earwig Country is a collection that gives, generously, a great deal of pleasure as well as enabling the reader to find ways of cherishing the ‘things of little consequence’ that constitute our own memories."
— DA Prince, London Grip
About the author
Angela Topping was born in Widnes to working-class parents, and now lives in Cheshire. She was educated in Liverpool for over a decade, gaining two Literature degrees at the University. She also gained an M.Ed. from Chester University. She is a wife, mother and grandmother.
She is the author of nine collections of poetry. Her poems have appeared in over a hundred anthologies, and in journals including Poetry Review, The North, Magma, Stand and The Dark Horse. Her pamphlet Hearth was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice in 2015. She is a former Writer in Residence at Gladstone’s Library.