The Dredging of Rituals (Alien Buddha Press, 2021)

In The Dredging of Rituals, Louise Mather offers careful and deliberate insight regarding her own experiences with menstruation and undiagnosed endometriosis, using surreal imagery to connect these experiences to the natural world. Mather's poems are sharp and poignant, whilst tenderly revealing moments of gentle beauty and softness. Slivers of hope glisten through darkness in these abstract poems, presenting an unbridled connection with the reader that invites an opportunity to look within, with awareness, at how far we each have come and how the past, although lingering at times, can provide us with hope for the future.

Lindsey Heatherly, author of GOLDEN HOUR MINUS THE GLOW (2021)

Louise Mather's poems remind me of walking through a dark forest with slithers of light showing the way. There's such violent tenderness, with spatterings of nature, magic, trauma and inevitability. When you read her words, it feels like humanity stripped bare - and you can see the muscles, bones, arteries and the inner soul beneath.

Nikki Dudley, streetcake editor, poet and novelist.

The poems on the pages of this chapbook seem not so much written, as conjured up from some great primal ache from within the depths of the Earth’s core itself. In each piece we are transported, thrust even, on a journey through the dark forests and cavernous landscapes Louise Mather has woven together. There are full moons, woodland creatures, rust and fire forging amulets and weaponry in the darkness, and the reader is invited to observe the most intimate passages of birth, growth into womanhood, and perhaps even death, and beyond.

Elizabeth M. Castillo, poet, writer, indie-press promoter & author of Cajoncito: Poems on Love, Loss, Y Otras Locuras

Available to purchase on Amazon UK and US