Serpent and Stone by Mari Ellis Dunning & Natalie Ann Holborrow
Broken Sleep Books
Serpent and Stone is a collaborative sequence by Mari Ellis Dunning and Natalie Ann Holborow that hands the mic to the women sidelined, simplified, or demonised by inherited stories. Moving through five sections, from fairy tales and Greek myth to Shakespearean figures, canonical literature and biblical archetypes, the book writes in paired poems that speak across each other, rethreading voice, motive, and agency. These monologues are sharp, sensual, and furious, attentive to how violence hides inside romance plots, how "evil"� is manufactured, and how girlhood is trained into obedience. Cinderella, Medusa, Bertha Mason, Dorothy, Eve, and Lilith emerge not as symbols but as thinking bodies, registering hunger, boredom, disgust, desire, rage, and the costs of being watched. The result is a collection that treats retelling as critique, and gives its characters the one thing they were rarely allowed in the originals, a voice that will not behave.
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