My Deep and Gorgeous Thirst

My Deep and Gorgeous Thirst is a first collection of poetry by Ellen McAteer, mentee of Alexander Hutchison and Rachel Long, founder of tell it slant poetry bookshop in Glasgow and Publishing Manager of the Poetry Translation Centre in London. The poems follow a journey from genderless tomboy to womanhood, through trauma, danger, motherhood, menopause, alcohol abuse, and the loss of her parents to cancer. The journey is mapped through the migration of her family, which retraces the forced political and economic migration of her working-class Scottish and Irish family. Unspoken emotions are projected on to the landscapes, cityscapes and edgelands that frame her search for home and self, and those same surroundings, filled with the ghosts of ancestors, shape her thoughts and feelings, as she fights to escape the heavy-drinking, ever-moving, success-fearing life and early death of her heritage, and break down the fences and walls of her past.