Coming out August 2023 with Fifth Wheel Press
mother bird is Sharon's debut poetry chapbook, exploring the violence inherent to naming gender. Analysing imaginings of femininity through a confessional lens, the construction of gender is seen as violent, innately creating homogeneity through its existence. Who defines 'girlhood'? How is it passed — as a secret generational secret, from mother to daughter? Where do you put it down if you don't want it anymore? If you have too much of it?
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Preorders open
Advance praise for mother bird
“mother bird is a chapbook with a misleading softness: the violence, the antagonisms, the turmoils of being female-bodied, are all wrapped up in a perfect femininity of voice. Sharon Zhang is capable of a very specific type of writing: writing where we are constantly moving between two places, two ideas, two loves, two countries, two genders. Each poem is as delicate as it is urgent. Each line is its own little necessary exhalation. It is that necessity which makes these gorgeous streams of language so worthwhile.” — Jak Merriman, poet
"mother bird is such a stunning collection. vivid, original, emotional. "Talk to me about that time you held a gun. How/you’re here, holding a gun, and I am on the wrong side of it." the poems line up to take your breath away, to gut punch you. every poem is stunning; the lines are "as/though newly-discovered stars." i want to eat this book so it can live inside me. you won't stop reading this book and "no-one can blame you for it anyway." — John Compton, author of the castration of a minor god (Ghost City Press) and trainride elsewhere (Pressed Wafer)
"mother bird is such a stunning collection. vivid, original, emotional. "Talk to me about that time you held a gun. How/you’re here, holding a gun, and I am on the wrong side of it." the poems line up to take your breath away, to gut punch you. every poem is stunning; the lines are "as/though newly-discovered stars." i want to eat this book so it can live inside me. you won't stop reading this book and "no-one can blame you for it anyway." — John Compton, author of the castration of a minor god (Ghost City Press) and trainride elsewhere (Pressed Wafer)