Editorial Note by Max Wallis
With Twenties, Jenny Pagdin moves from clinical waiting rooms and homesick interiors to the raw chaos of young adulthood. The poem is a catalogue of what is carried and endured: clutter and mould, street smells of dough and spliffs, the threat of police and A&E, sex, sickness, and survival. Its lines tumble in a rush, mimicking the relentless onslaught of experience, where humour and horror jostle… “the sieve which doubled up as colander” against “the sipping my friend’s pint glass of sick.” Pagdin’s gift lies in her ability to hold contradiction: danger and vitality, intimacy and estrangement, despair and resilience. The poem closes with an image of protection, an orchid fostered out “for its own safety”, a fragile emblem of care amid the wreckage. In this final piece, Pagdin’s work insists on remembering not just the damage, but the ways we make it through. Which, if we talk about an Aftershock ethos, sort of nails it.
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About the author:
Jenny Pagdin is the author of The Snow Globe (Nine Arches, 2024) and Caldbeck (Eyewear, 2017), both exploring her experiences of postpartum psychosis. Winner of the 2024 East Anglian Book Award for Poetry, she was highly commended in the Bridport Prize, shortlisted for the Mslexia Pamphlet Competition, and placed second in the Café Writers Prize. Her work appears in Poetry London, Magma, The Emma Press, and elsewhere.
