With Paper for Feet

Jennifer A McGowan's collection of themed narrative poems is steeped in the traditions of oral storytelling and folklore. Each section addresses a different source: world folk stories, Shakespeare and the Iliad; skillfully mining old stories for new truths, giving a voice to silent characters, or an alternative take on the accepted view - especially of women.

Drawing together Jennifer A. McGowan’s poetry of myth and folktale, and the frailties – human or otherwise – behind them, With Paper for Feet explores, mostly from a female perspective, the guts it takes to live or – often – die, un-heroically. Her characters laugh, argue, complain, suffer,
curse.
...Gold is heavy,
and chafes....
aware that more is expected of them, but unwilling to play up.

Praise for Jennifer A. McGowan’s work
...gritty thought; wit; striking candour – an unafraid recognition
of life’s richness and desolation; memorable detail; all these are
underpinned by a graceful, subtle, quite lovely way with language.
Kevin Crossley-Holland

...bedecked with wit, irony, bittersweet folly and dictional-shifts
jazzy enough to make a reader dance. Gray Jacobik

... precise, observant and deep into mythology.
Claribel Alegría