The Gun Runner's Daughter

Susan Castillo Street weaves a feisty autobiographical web of familial relationships, cottonmouths, cicadas and crabbing amongst many other varied subjects; a 'bayou fusillade' (The Alchemist) of images and well-hewn narratives from a Southern Gothic childhood to the present day. Be ready to be transported to Mississippi and beyond by this vivid and intriguing collection brimming with the lessons of a well-lived life. Jill Munro, Author of The Quilted Multiverse and The Man from La Paz Susan Castillo Street's poems, in the first section in particular, read like short films such is their sense of place, characters, narrative, and tension. Gothic there is here yet also tenderness, humour, and a refreshing down-to-earthness. But after saying all that it's a waste of effort / to try to place things in neat boxes. Brett Evans, Editor of Prole, and Author of The Devil's Tattoo Susan Castillo Street's new collection startles in its straight-talking ability to deal with memory, loss and hope. Incidents remembered from childhood, and from a life well-lived, are recounted with easy wit and subtle measure. The title poem, 'The Gun-Runner's Daughter', remembers a teacher who bullied its narrator as a young girl. Yet, with a sort of steely generosity of spirit that characterises the collection as a whole, the poem ends trusting that the teacher is the one who has learned from the girl. These are poems that teach us to listen to, and learn from, incidents in the life of the poet. With a dash of Southern Gothic - running guns to Cuba; magnolia trees; the scent of wisteria; a dead baby sister - the collection delivers its lessons with tenderness, sometimes remorse, always with the hope that the details of a life can illuminate the living of our lives. These are poems that touch the heart. They teach us to remember, and to celebrate that remembering. Nick Selby, Professor of American Studies (University of East Anglia) and Author of American Poetry since 1900 (Edinburgh University Press)