Where I Slept

When he asks what kind of work I do, I tell him I am a poet.

‘Poetry will break your heart,’ he says.

‘Or, perhaps it is the only thing that won’t,’ I say.

Where I Slept is the story of a young woman’s devastating and inspirational search for a life of artistic integrity.

Leaving a seedy boarding house in a provincial town in the 1990s, she travels to Melbourne—to all the possibilities of the city. She lives in bohemian share houses with painters, activists, addicts and petty criminals, on the couches of friends and not-so-accommodating acquaintances and, for a time, in the streets, parks and railway stations of a city both richly gratifying and callously indifferent.

Libby Angel’s work of autofiction is an unforgettable portrait of a life on the fringes, peppered with dark humour and moments of elation—a poem of longing and desire.

Libby Angel is an Australian poet and novelist. She won the 2018 Barbara Jefferis Award for her debut novel, The Trapeze Act. Her poetry has appeared in a number of Australian journals. Where I Slept, a work of autofiction, is her second novel.