The women of Greek tragedy speak

In Mona Arshi’s sophisticated third collection, Mouth, a chorus of “marginal women” from Greek tragedy step boldly into the spotlight – as if the “stuffed rags” in their mouths can be pulled out and waved like freedom flags.

In Antigone, a play written by Sophocles around 441BC, Oedipus’s daughter is sealed alive in a cave: the mouth is shut and just like that she is gone. In Arshi’s delightfully tongue-in-cheek retelling, Antigone fights for what is hers in the High Court of Justice then calls on her virtual assistant to plan her escape. “Alexa. Are you listening?” Our new heroine decides to “hit the road” to admire pretty frescoes and slurp oysters in the sun.

Little is known about Eurydice besides supposedly being Apollo’s oak nymph daughter. But in the wildly imaginative diary fragments of Eurydice’s Song, the poet draws out the reference to “dike”, the Greek word for justice inside Eurydice’s name, to dispute assumptions that silent women are “dumb as bark”. Eurydice condemns the way history throws women away “like dusty moths into the night”, or frazzles each tongue, when morning comes, like a “succulent lozenge of meat” in the sun. “Stupid girl – speak up”, Eurydice is warned. If not, “shadows will tear strips” from her flesh until only the mute skeleton remains.

Throughout Mouth, which follows her Forward prize-winning debut Small Hands and novel Somebody Loves You, Arshi has that rare gift of being able to persuade us to listen – not only to nymphs but also talking apples and crying grass in The Departed As Apples and A Short, Stabby Thing. I think this has something to do with her former career as a human rights lawyer, during which she worked on several high-profile legal cases, including that of Stephen Lawrence, refugees and women fleeing domestic violence. The concern surfaces in her references to the plight of Yazidi women or the mothers in Ukraine, but with far more abstraction than any court of law would allow.

In Antigone’s Raag, stars “drop their skins”, while in Dear Agony Aunt, “problematic” shadows go “AWOL” like each woman “that no longer knows her place”. The “owner” chases shadows around corners but they are too “quick, zippy” to be caught. From her stunning first line about glimpsing her “soul … in the corner of / the window, hitched on a bee”, there is surprise at every turn.

Arshi has a playful interest in Russian doll-style reflections (a soul inside a bee inside a window): such images bring to mind the women and their sharp tongues inside silenced mouths. For the Human holds my favourite: “On the highest shelf of my heart there sits / a limpet” and “next to that … there’s a pistol. / Surviving inside the throat of this pistol / is the body of a small bird, with her own heart.” Mouth is a book that turns the brain inside out – then beats it with a stick until the dust of ancient literature falls away.

In The Logic of the Broken Things, Arshi refers to this chaos as “Pointillist shatterings”. I see the influence of this dot-by-dot painting technique in the “fat achy” tears she collects from the well of female trauma. Her worldview is impressionistic, as she marvels at cutting-edge technology or the “blizzard of yellow” glimpsed briefly from a train window, whizzing past at high speed. Either way, there is a spectacular wizardry to her words. Though instead of objects vanishing by sleight of hand, it is mythological women who appear and – as in law – defiantly take their stand.

To a Man with a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail

In war the mothers have all the language.

My greatest fear is that I will wake up

tomorrow and not fear anything again.

I won’t have to poke awake my uncrying

children who will be up at dawn scavenging

on mounds before even the crows land.

What is it like to be without light?

In the bomb shelter we trace our circadian rhythms.

Oh dearest breath don’t leave me now. I play

Ludo with my son and my lungs are on fire

and the bombing hasn’t even started.

Am I winning? He asks eagerly in the torchlight.

I catch a glint of a white tooth. It’s an age-old language;

Yes I tell him yes. You are winning.

Mouth by Mona Arshi is published by Chatto & Windus (£12.99). Order a copy from observershop.co.uk to receive a 10% discount. Delivery charges may apply

Photography Picturenow/Universal Images Group via Getty Images