States of Happiness

States of Happiness, Suzanne Battys second full-length collection, explores the relationship between her twin sister and their journey through illness and wellness. It combines empathy, imagination, and a search for states of happiness, moving from the everyday to the visionary and exploring the uncertainty and necessity of love.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 96 pages
Publication date: 27 September 2018
Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd

States of Happiness, Suzanne Batty's second full-length collection, opens with an extended sequence written in memory of her twin sister. This explores their relationship from their shared birth to her twins' early death from Friedreichs ataxia, a rare degenerative disease. Suzanne Batty's gifts of empathy and imagination combine to produce a profoundly moving elegy that tells the hidden story of growing up as the "well" twin and explores the meaning of illness and wellness in the light of her own experiences. The collection as a whole extends her range and probes more deeply into her primary concerns: the uncertainty and necessity of love and the drive to find meaning and healing through the medium of language. The search for states of happiness, no matter how fleeting, is at the heart of this collection. These are poems that move from the everyday to the visionary, in which the physical world reflects changing emotional and perceptual states. Anarchic and sensuous, they fearlessly encounter both beauty and darkness, enabling a new and deeper connection with the world.

States of Happiness, Suzanne Batty's second full-length collection, opens with an extended sequence written in memory of her twin sister. This explores their relationship from their shared birth to her twins' early death from Friedreichs ataxia, a rare degenerative disease. Suzanne Batty's gifts of empathy and imagination combine to produce a profoundly moving elegy that tells the hidden story of growing up as the "well" twin and explores the meaning of illness and wellness in the light of her own experiences. The collection as a whole extends her range and probes more deeply into her primary concerns: the uncertainty and necessity of love and the drive to find meaning and healing through the medium of language. The search for states of happiness, no matter how fleeting, is at the heart of this collection. These are poems that move from the everyday to the visionary, in which the physical world reflects changing emotional and perceptual states. Anarchic and sensuous, they fearlessly encounter both beauty and darkness, enabling a new and deeper connection with the world.

Weight: 144g
Dimension: 139 x 216 x 6 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781780374260