The Art of Scratching

By Shazea Quraishi

Taking inspiration from sources including historical and medical texts, curator's notes and the Complete Kama Sutra, Shazea Quraishi's poems explore love and loss through a range of voices: an Iraqi mother holds her fragile son; under the guise of ardour, a courtesan searches a client for signs of the woman she loves; a wife is unsettled by her husband's new family... The Art of Scratching is her first book-length collection, and includes The Courtesans Reply, a sequence written in response to the Caturbhani, four plays written around 300 BC on the life of courtesans in India.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1780372485
• ISBN13: 9781780372488
• Release Date: May 2015
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.2" x 8.3"