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Writers on Recordings: Colm Tóibín on Elizabeth Bishop

London Review Bookshop Podcast

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The Little Girl's Poems

The poem is about a six-year-old girl travelling to Brazil with her aunt. Her mother was in a mental hospital, and the windows had been blown out. The whole idea of personal identity will be undermined by these lines. She uses tongue armust to manipulate the reader into a state of ease. And then using the same tone to unsettle the reader totally.

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