The Room Between Us

Author: Saul, Denise

21st century

Published on 1 April 2022 by Liverpool University Press in the United Kingdom as part of 'the Pavilion Poetry' series.

Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2023Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2022 A PBS Recommendation Summer 2022In her debut collection, Denise Saul explores family and identity as she tells the story of a mother's illness and subsequent aphasia, and a daughter's ongoing role as carer. At the heart of their relationship is an awareness of the inadequacies of language to name painful experiences as together they start to know the world afresh. Deeply affecting, the book finds a space for both the extraordinary and the ordinary, balancing all that is between. Such betweenness creates a space to explore wider dynamics of power, and the epiphanies and aftershocks of ongoing loss.