Hayley Frances’ debut collection ‘Administer the Laughing Gas’ is an an example of grief in translation. Each poem is an unfiltered documentation of a bereaved mothers survival after baby loss. Spanning birth trauma, child loss, motherhood and physicality, Hayley’s poems are ethereal realisations of intense trauma, grief, body autonomy, parent ritual and the daze of digital culture. This collection is the beginning of an awakening that presents the reality of loss through poems that powerfully translate a mother’s emotional strife alongside her lived experience.
This collection honours Hayley’s initiation into grief. With each interpersonal loss we experience, there is an opportunity to witness our loss of self, of who we really are. If we pay our grief the attention it deserves, and tend to it like a child of nature, we can invite our lost-selves back (our inner children) and integrate every version of us into our presence. This is how we truly reconnect to each other and the earth. Our personal grief is an invitation to witness the much greater loss of motherhood, community, breath, and our brutal separation from mother-earth.
Administer the Laughing Gas aims to support, validate, and bring awareness to child loss and its effect in society and intends to acknowledge poetry as a therapeutic medium.
‘Inventive, vivid, dreamlike yet unflinching and full to burst with startling images and achingly beautiful language. This is a book that invites new ways of seeing grief, loss, trauma, motherhood and the body with candour, vulnerability, personality and hope. An important and compelling work on the complex journey of survival.’ Cecilia Knapp
‘This is how grief becomes a stained glass window: beautiful, reflection, imagistic and somehow holy. Gorgeous and terrifying. Read it.’ Joelle Taylor
