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Circadian

Chelsey Clammer author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Red Hen Press

Published:16th Nov '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

Circadian cover

Winner of the 2015 Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award, Circadian is a collection of essays that weaves together personal account with cultural narrative, only to unravel them and explore the brilliant and destructive cycles of who we are. Using poetic language and lyric structures, Clammer dives into her stories of trauma, mental illnesses, and a wide spectrum of relationships in order to understand experience through different of frameworks of thought. Whether it’s turning to mathematics to try to solve the problem of an alcoholic father, the history of naming to look at sexism, weather to re-consider trauma, or even grammar as a way to question identity, these “facts” move beyond metaphor, and become new ways to narrate our cyclical ways of being.

“Clammer (BodyHome), a contributor to McSweeney’s and the Rumpus, engages with trauma, letting go, and the pleasures of writing in this collection of 12 lyric essays. She is a compassionate and self-reflective narrator, weaving the personal into experiments with form. . . . Each essay builds on the one before, demonstrating the author’s evolution as a writer and survivor. Clammer has successfully bridged genres here while exploring difficult subjects.”—Publishers Weekly

"In her second collection, Clammer (BodyHome, 2015) once again stretches the boundaries of the form, pushing against 'the tenuous fences between poetry and fiction and nonfiction and humor and critical writing and academic writing and blogging and every other genre that has existed, ever, in order to discover how to discuss our lives.' The essays are notable for their inventive language; many take the form of prose poems or verbal collages; one is constructed of bullet-pointed sentences; another, like a class syllabus. . . . An affecting memoir emerges from a dozen circuitous, digressive essays."—Kirkus Reviews

“I have never read an interrogation of language, gender politics, or aftermath quite like Clammer's passionately searing Circadian. Though evocative of writers from Anne Carson to Kate Zambreno, Clammer’s urgency and electricity here create a flash of lightning all her own.”—Gina Frangello, author of A Life of Men and Every Kind of Wanting

“In these beautifully written essays, Clammer considers the intricate, confounding, and powerful connections between story and body, narrative and physical form. She examines the subject of trauma through a series of innovative frames, casting a fearless and curious gaze on her material and bringing new insights to life.”—Marya Hornbacher, New York Times bestselling author of Wasted (Pulitzer Prize finalist)


Essay Featured in Women on Writing

Essay Featured in Entropy Magazine: https://entropymag.org/collectively-speaking/

  • Winner of Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award 2015 (United States)

ISBN: 9781597096034

Dimensions: 203mm x 127mm x 13mm

Weight: 181g

176 pages