‘In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered’ can be purchased from the publisher using this link: Against the Grain Press

There will be plenty of books of poetry that grab the headlines and win prizes this year, but none of them will be as important as this one.

Richard Skinner

A brave, layered piece of work, in turn heartbreaking and hilarious. Chaucer Cameron is lyrically voicing her own experiences and simultaneously documenting the undocumented and doing it with a bold beauty – I’m in awe.

Sabrina Mahfouz

Exact and devastating in her depiction of an underworld of exploitation, sex and violence, this poet refuses to spare herself or the reader. These poems ring out like gunshots in the night; they will wake you from your sleep. Yet despite its distilled directness, this book is lifted by both mystery and surprise. Listen for the songs emerging from the dark centre of this transformative work of experience and survival.

Jacqueline Saphra

In an Ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered presents a harrowing portrait of the dehumanization of women – but these voices must be witnessed, because too often sex workers are silenced or their speech co-opted. These poems are complex and moving too, because besides exploitation and violence there are also moments of laughter and even negotiations for power. The stories of the prostitutes reveal the dysfunction of Western sexuality, where often the privileging of male pleasure reduces all women to dehumanized objects. Most of all Chaucer Cameron’s poems refuse judgement of prostitutes, realizing them as multifaceted human beings.

Zoë Brigley

________________________

Voicing Our Silences

________________________

Hooked – poetry film in two voices based on In an ideal World I’d Not Be Murdered