Zoetrope
progress spinning ahead of us
but just out of reach -
Zoetrope (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2023) is a journey through the circles we trace, the detours we take and the repetitive movements we find safety in as we struggle to progress and accept change. The poems explore how fear, denial and an unwillingness to question those in power combine to hold us back, finally breaking out in search of hope.
‘It is a stirring experience to read Zoetrope. Each turn of the page brings something new and unexpected. Otto’s lens on the world reveals both the sinister and the sublime, in poems overflowing with wit and imagination.’
Rebecca Goss
‘Emily Dickinson would love the work of Hilary Otto – an exciting emerging poet who fulfils Dickinson’s directive to ‘tell the truth but tell it slant’. Never prosaic or obvious, Hilary Otto’s collection of startlingly original, inventive, visionary poems is informed by a quick wit, social and political consciousness and a lively, and far-reaching intelligence. Hilary is a master of dazzling and affecting imagery and speaks her truth with eloquence, insight and encyclopaedic knowledge of a wide variety of subjects. She is equally adept when writing about the arts as the sciences. A must-read by an exciting contemporary poet.’
Anna Saunders
Founding Director, Cheltenham Poetry Festival
‘The speakers in Hilary Otto’s bold and unsettling debut pamphlet spin toward and away from the reader with the unnerving brilliance of hallucinations. Here are human voices trapped in patterns inflicted on them by the powerful, voices terrified but ‘capable / of extraordinary things’. Otto’s thrilling phrase-making generates intensity and momentum, the reader pulled through a labyrinth of dark corridors lit by metaphor, the overall effect a hymn to the relentless power of imagination: ‘The more we mustn't be, / the more we become.’’
John McCullough
‘Outstanding’
Nigel Kent. Full review here:
https://nigelkentpoet.wordpress.com/2023/12/09/review-of-zoetrope-by-hilary-otto/
Hedgehog Poetry Press
Paperback : 32 pages
ISBN : 978-1-913499-72-3
Product Dimensions : 14.81 x 0.36 x 21.01 cm
£8.00