Shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2021Shortlisted for the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize 2022
PBS Special Commendation Summer 2021
Alice Hiller's debut performs an act of witness and restitution. Working with her childhood and adolescent medical notes, bird of winter creates a redemptive language to speak the darkness of being sexually abused by a family member. Through the excavated histories of Pompeii and Herculaneum, these poems additionally document the grooming that prepares a child for sexual abuse, and the vulnerability which remains afterwards. Calling up the landscapes and relationships which sustained her, as well as the injury she experienced, Hiller reflects the nature and impact of a crime to which millions around the world are subjected - and asks how we may find our ways towards healing.