The Bridle is concerned with the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the human condition. Childhood, family, memory, myth — even the arguments and silences between lovers — all are enlisted in the bid to come to terms with our fleshy, mortal state.
Poetry, here, is the bridle; restraining and shaping emotion, holding and guiding thought, as Pugh grapples with what it means to be human and female and how best to speak of that experience. Whatever the poems’ forms (sonnet or free verse, rhymed or unrhymed, long sequences or short, 6 line fragments), they sing out to the reader directly, urgently, in despair and celebration.
Meryl reading at the launch of Long Poem Magazine's Issue 6.
Meryl Pugh was born in 1968 and grew up in Wales, New Zealand, East Anglia and the Forest of Dean, where her family settled. Short-listed for the New Writing Ventures Poetry Prize in 2005, she is a Hawthornden Fellow. Her first pamphlet, Relinquish, was published in 2007 by Arrowhead Press. She is a PhD candidate at UEA and lives in Norwich and London, where she teaches poetry. Her blog can be found here, and The Bridle can be bought here.
