Here is a review in London Grip, by the wonderful Pat Edwards in which she writes:
Sensuous, honest writing about sexual encounters, childbirth and early motherhood… a totally honest way of confronting ‘house work’.
Other reviews:
I love this raging, angry, funny, and often beautiful and tender book. Many of us will recognise ourselves amongst these pages as the poet navigates the tricky waters between cleaning the toilet, the children, her partner and herself; and often in that order. It is also a kind of wry love song to the domestic and to the realities of love itself- hugely enjoyable. Deborah Alma
In House Work Khadija Rouf navigates the difficult territory of life after childbirth. She explores the ambivalence women often feel about housework and childcare — work which is traditionally women’s work, and which is universally unpaid or underpaid, unvalued or undervalued — and poses the question, crucial to all couples, of how to negotiate gender roles with a partner you love. Rouf is a passionate advocate for truth, fairness and equality, and her frustration (and sometimes fury) blazes out of these searingly honest, full-hearted and intimate poems. Every woman will see something of themselves in this book. Hilary Menos
Don’t be misled by the title, to read House Work is to discover surprises on every page, sifted from mundane chores and home’s hidden corners. These poems range across the tender and erotic, painfully beautiful and moving, and charged with womanhood, all carefully choreographed together. From Amazonian hoovering or a fridge singing in Reykjavik to ‘Us, making the sounds of trees, trapping / animal calls beneath our fingernails’, Khadija Rouf offers us exquisite imagery and memorable lines throughout. A stunning collection. Sarah James
You can read the first poem, and buy House Work, by clicking here
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