Teika Marija Smits

Russian Doll

The poems of Russian Doll tell a story of metamorphosis and becoming. Charting the ever-shifting terrain of selfhood, they speak of the joys and challenges of being both daughter and mother; schoolgirl and middle-aged woman; and detail the many ways in which the stories of our lives are as multicoloured and multilayered as a Russian doll.

ISBN 978-1-912876-49-5

Paperback

34 pages

£6.00 +P&P

THE AUTHOR

Teika Marija Smits is a writer, freelance editor and mother-of-two. Her poems have been widely published. Teika was formerly the managing editor of Mother’s Milk Books and is now an Editor-at-Large at Valley Press alongside running The Book Stewards – a writers’ support site that she manages with her husband. In her spare moments she likes to doodle, draw and paint. More information here: teikamarijasmits.com

“This moving collection is alive with vivid characters and the longing, living and learning of love, belonging, and sometimes loss – in family, friendship, life. Here, Smits’s Russian doll is mother and child, fake news and Death’s toy, all contained within poems as layered and expansive as a set of matryoshka dolls, slowly revealing their secrets.”

Sarah James

“Russian Doll is a sensory collection: full of light, heat, colour. The poems are layered, fragmented and connected; like the nest of wooden dolls: shining dolls, shamed dolls, sad dolls; big dolls, sick dolls, baby dolls. They chart the complexity of human relations and shine with intelligence and care; craft and curiosity. This is a collection to be savoured, to be shared and to be read again.”

Dr Rachel Bower