Mutability

A chronicle of motherhood and infancy, Andrea Brady’s Mutability marks the excesses of attention and love in this unique relationship, the gradual unfurling of one person into two. In poems and prose, these scripts offer a 'model of duplicity', revealing how the beginnings of language, the spaces which open up through movement, the undeniable possibility of harm and the unbearable intimacy between mother and child challenge the premise of individual autonomy. Seeking 'a writing of honest particularity, not clean, in a form which would catch rather than cauterize this pouring', Mutability brilliantly captures the experience of motherhood.

 

At the same time, Brady explores the child-space, a utopian place of discovery and adaptation, as an arena of risk, violence, possession, and privation. Carefully observing the consequences of 'the beginning of all possibility, and the beginning of its finitude', the book notes the child’s discovery of being a new person to 'the discovery of an exit'. Brady’s unique and moving book celebrates and investigates life’s most essential relationship.

 

Read an interview with the author here, on the idea of 'radical tenderness'.

 

‘Many parents will find echoes of their experiences here; many non-parents will, too [. . .] What makes Mutability stand out is its comprehensiveness; Brady explodes the ‘mommy poem’ to examine it from multiple angles. Hers is a “humane account of the household” that offers incisive analysis of the “inscrutable, incipient” infant.’ —The Rumpus