The Don't Touch Garden

"Mirror, mirror on the wall," the old joke says. "I am my mother after all." But which? Born in 1938 and adopted soon after, Kate Foley grew up in London during WWII. The Don't Touch Garden explores what it is to be adopted, both for the child and the adoptive parents, through a wide range of poetic styles and complex emotions. An absorbing account of the legacy of being an adopted child. Forthright and tender, this moving sequence reflects Foley's unflinching gaze into the mirror in a sometimes excoriating attempt to discern traces of her belonging and to make peace with the past. Joy Howard, poet, publisher and former fostering services manager.