Caldbeck

Three months after she gave birth for the first time, Jenny Pagdin's life was pummelled by sudden postnatal psychosis - 'and still it rained down, crosshatching the sky'. This intimate, sharp debut pamphlet charts the triggers, the illness and the first shoots of recovery. These are poems from the other side: of sanity, of hope, of motherhood. In this unflinching and confessional record where desperation intertwines with measure, the poetry is in the details - be that the hospital TV which can't be switched off, or the scratchings of a child's picture. Pagdin's fragmented narrative, broken into a number of forms, offers unmissable insight into a shattering mental illness.