The Girls in the Red House are Singing

‘our task is to sing in this killer place’ – but how does the body go on singing, in pain, in isolation, in dead-end love?

Tracey Slaughter’s po­werful new collection of poems begins with the sequence that won the £10,000 Manchester Poetry Prize in 2023, and is in four parts:

‘opioid sonatas’ opens in a high-speed crash and travels the jagged aftermath, charting the fallout of grief and the body’s long-term struggles with dosage and damage.

‘psychopathology of the small hotel’ haunts the rented rooms of stale no-exit adultery, watching the trade-offs the body makes to dull pain with the drug of touch.

‘the girls in the red house are singing’ tunnels back into childhood and teenage years, to face the echoes of violence left unvoiced – and confront the legacy of rape culture.

‘nudes, animals & ruins’ circles the emptied streets in a state of solo lockdown, listening for the sounds the body makes when it must survive alone.

About the Author
Tracey Slaughter is the author of Devil’s Trumpet (2021) deleted scenes for lovers (2016), Conventional Weapons (poems, 2019), The Longest Drink in Town (2015) and her body rises (poems and short stories, 2005). Her novella if there is no shelter was published in the UK by Ad Hoc in 2020. She has received numerous awards, including the international Fish Short Story Prize 2020, the Bridport Prize 2014, and BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards in 2004 and 2001. She won the 2015 Landfall Essay Competition, and was the recipient of the 2010 Louis Johnson New Writers Bursary. She teaches Creative Writing at the University of Waikato, and edits the journals Mayhem and Poetry NZ.

Author Biography

Tracey Slaughter is the author of Devil’s Trumpet (stories, 2021), Conventional Weapons (poems, 2019), Deleted Scenes for Lovers (stories, 2016), The Longest Drink in Town (novella, 2015), and Her Body Rises (poems and short stories, 2005). Her novella If There Is No Shelter was published in the UK by Ad Hoc in 2020. She has received numerous
awards, including the 2024 Calibre Essay Prize, 2023 Manchester Poetry
Prize, the 2020 Fish Short Story Prize, the 2014 Bridport Prize, and BNZ Katherine Mansfield Awards in 2004 and 2001. She won the 2015 Landfall
Essay Competition, and was the recipient of the 2010 Louis Johnson New
Writer’s Bursary. She teaches creative writing at the University of
Waikato, and edits the journals Mayhem and Poetry NZ.