I Imagine Myself

I Imagine Myself is for anyone who has ever imagined they were someone (or something) else. A powerful collection that asserts the freedom to have a visible midlife as a woman, to have difficulties in a relationship and work through them, and to weather the storms of aging. In ambitious and dynamic poems, I Imagine Myself gives voice to the experience of trying to discover a new self, tracing an arc through illness, middle age, connections to other people and the natural world.

“Celese Augé’s witty and intelligent poetry treats serious subjects with a light touch, allowing her to investigate and tease out her subjects with impressive verve and energy. Her controlled, narrative-driven poems deal with the everyday in an imaginative, outspoken and engaging manner. Augé is a woman journeying through life with an unflinching gaze, seeking out what the world expects of a middle-aged woman and her place in 21st century society and often upending the expectations.” - Jean O’Brien, author of Fish on a Bicycle: New & Selected Poems.

“Charged with imagination and emotional honesty, Celeste Augé explores the intimacies of her body, at the whim of hormones, with craft and self-awareness. Storms, external and internal, whip through these pages, swirling up ‘brain fog’, intimations of mortality, at a time when ‘we carry our pains around like sacks filled with cats’. There is no superfluous poem here, each one acutely observed, replete with illuminated images, limned by an exacting hand. A real gem.” - Geraldine Mills, author of An Urgency of Stars and Bone Road.

“What is so beautiful about these poems is the ice brilliant truth that our lives have our lonely ghost selves living beside us, dipping into our reality every so often and knifing us with regret, despair, joy, love and acceptance.” - Orla Foyle, author of Belios and Red Riding Hood’s Dilemma