Overview

Emotional Support Horse tracks the tragicomedy of grief, and out of low vision, bereavement and eco-stress blends poems of startling wit, verve and solace. A woman longs to transform into Nicola Walker in a cop car, or a Hungarian Vizsla, or just to find an equal footing with her doctor. Personal and planetary fractures blur in these vivid, dreamlike pages that will speak to anyone who has faced down confusion and rupture, when they strike. In part soulful, in part self-help, the poems veer between droll and despairing, their swings from high to low and back again reflecting a self adrift on a choppy sea. A self, however, not alone, but accompanied throughout by a host of other species. From earthworms to wolfhounds, flamingos to Konic ponies, the world of Emotional Support Horse flickers with light and life, charting sorrow's depths even as it stumbles upon joy.

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9781800174474

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'These are poems of great wit and guile, tender and smart and beautiful. If there's a family line, it's from Stevie Smith's domestic macabre or Frederick Seidel's undercuts, but Emotional Support Horse confirms Claudine Toutoungi as a remarkable talent and a one-off. I loved it.' - Michael Symmons Roberts 'Moving between levity and gravitas, between erudition and instinct, Toutoungi's seriously playful engagement with language mines words and phrases to expose sudden heart-stopping emotion.' - Greta Stoddart

Author Information

Claudine Toutoungi is a poet and playwright. She was born in Warwickshire, studied English and French at Trinity College, Oxford and has worked as an actor, a BBC radio drama producer, an English teacher, and a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow for Newnham and Selwyn Colleges in Cambridge. Carcanet published her debut poetry collection Smoothie in 2017. This was followed by Two Tongues (2020), which won the Ledbury Munthe Poetry Prize for Second Collections. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish and her live poetry contributions to festivals include Tongue Fu, Poetry East and appearances on BBC Radio 4. Her plays for theatre include Bit Part and Slipping (Stephen Joseph Theatre), and her many audio dramas for BBC Radio 4 include Deliverers, The Inheritors and The Voice in my Ear. She lives in Cambridge.

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