The Blue Dragonfly by Veronica Eley

Hidden Brook Press 2021

ISBN : 9781738095902

“inside out
outside in
the feelings have become
statues in the garden
monuments to a crime”

The Blue Dragonfly is a courageous collection of poetry charting the deep psychological waters of living with childhood trauma. Veronica Eley’s raw, direct voice challenges.

Emerging from the psychiatrist’s padded office; from sanctioned gangster hallways of a mental hospital and from daily disorderly documenting of family life, the poet’s words unravel tortured experience - obliquely exact and savagely beautiful. It’s a wild ride which may require a trigger warning. If you’re new to the idea that writing can be therapeutic, this collection will convince you of the power of storytelling to explore, excavate, catalogue and contain the patchwork nature of human life. In Foreward, editor Roger Langen, who is also Eley’s husband, explains how the layout of the book reflects the stages of healing trauma: “injury and illness in 1 Secret Monsters; intervention (experienced like a miracle) in 2 The Bodhisattva; forgiveness and transcendence in 3 Mother.” (p.xv)