Mutability: Scripts for Infancy

by Andrea Brady

A chronicle of motherhood and infancy, Brady’s Mutability marks the excesses of attention and love in this unique relationship, the gradual unfurling of one person into two. In poems and prose, these scripts offer a “model of duplicity,” revealing how the beginnings of language, the spaces which open up through movement, the undeniable possibility of harm, and the unbearable intimacy between mother and child challenge the premise of individual autonomy. Seeking “a writing of honest particularity, not clean, in a form which would catch rather than cauterize this pouring,” Mutability brilliantly captures the experience of motherhood.

 

At the same time, Brady explores the child-space, a utopian place of discovery and adaptation, as an arena of risk, violence, possession, and privation. Carefully observing the consequences of “the beginning of all possibility, and the beginning of its finitude,” the book notes the child’s discovery of being a new person to “the discovery of an exit.” Brady’s unique and moving book celebrates and investigates life’s most essential relationship.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Paperback

First published December 15, 2012

About the author

Andrea Brady is an American poet and lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. She studied at Columbia University and the University of Cambridge. Her academic work focuses on contemporary poetry and the early modern period. She is the curator of the Archive of the Now and the co-editor (with Keston Sutherland) of Barque Press.

Reviews

[Sofía · Rating 4 out of 5]

Esta no es una historia habitual de la maternidad. Mutability de Brady explora el devenir del niño y la extrañeza de la relación madre-hijo a través de una serie de "guiones" de poesía y prosa. Es un trabajo desafiante y exploratorio que examina las posibilidades utópicas del "espacio infantil" y la insoportable intimidad entre madre e hijo que infringe la autonomía individual.

[Zack]

to me this read like experimental poetic memoir about the first few years of raising a child. i liked it a lot.