Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks

Overview

Sliced Tongue and Pearl Cufflinks explores fracturedconnections of self, family and home, laying bare thedevastating impact of traumatisation against languageand identity in its unflinching quest to communicatethe brittle reality of everyday life at the edge. Thedestructive forces of suicide, insomnia, self-harm andabuse are given order through the creative drive of poeticforms. At the heart of this collection are a daughter’sfraught relationships with her half Japanese father, whosurvived three years as a POW in Czechoslovakia, anda mother who grew up in National Socialist Germany,and whose unspoken traumas haunted the fabric offamily life.

Author Biography

Kittie Belltree was born in South Londonin the 1960’s. She moved to Wales aged18 to study Law and went on to train as ajournalist at The London School of Printing.Kittie left London with two carrier bags and,despite all efforts to the contrary, for the nexttwenty years she lived an unconventional life,working and travelling in South Americaand North Africa and supporting herself ina range of jobs from life model to mysteryshopper. She continued to write throughoutthis period, eventually returning to educationand gaining an MA in Creative Writing withDistinction from Aberystwyth University.Kittie works as a Specialist Tutor for studentswith neurodiversities and learning differencesat Aberystwyth University where she is alsocompleting a part-time PhD. Off campus sheteaches creative writing in the communitywhere she has worked with home-educatedteenagers and people with dementia.