In her debut full collection of poetry, Rivka Clifton, a curator of curiosities, challenges us to consider language as a form of violence. Challenges us...

In her debut full collection of poetry, Rivka Clifton, a curator of curiosities, challenges us to consider language as a form of violence. Challenges us to understand what violence can be: memory, both lived and re-lived. Rivka draws on her personal journey with these powerful landscapes, which are part incantation, part exorcism. The poems in Muzzle contemplate the relationship between speech and violence and how translating the experience of grief and loss into language can itself be a form of violence-through one's initial experience and living memory. How can everyday speech be violent, how can small violences be a means of communication-these are the questions posed to us by Muzzle. As we traverse the poems in this collection, we are invited to consider our own lives, our own relationship with memory, grief, loss, love, and, yes, violence.