Girldom

Megan Peak’s debut collection Girldom chronicles coming of age as a woman: the violence of discovery, the evolution of sexuality, and the demanding yet necessary acts of self-preservation and resistance. Amid landscapes of wasps and nettle, cold moons and icy rivers, daughters navigate trauma and desire, sisters bear witness to each other’s trajectories, and girls experience worlds of both rage and tenderness. There is an impounded beauty in Girldom, the beauty of a healing wound. Compressed yet explosive, these poems shake like fists and vibrate with the seeking of voice. “I was a girl before I was anything else,” the poet writes. In the midst of the #MeToo movement, Peak’s book is timely and timeless in its confrontation of the constraints and concerns bound up in being a girl.