The following version of this poem was used to create this guide: Gailey, Jeannine Hall. “The Selkie Wife's Daughter.” The Journal of Mythic Arts, https://endicottstudio.typepad.com/poetrylist/the-selkie-wifes-daughter-by-jeannine-hall-gailey.html.

Note that all parenthetical citations within the guide refer to the lines of the poem from which the quotations are taken.

“The Selkie Wife's Daughter” was first published in Jeannine Hall Gailey’s collection Becoming the Villainess, which draws from myth and folklore to critique gender politics and the ways women lose and regain power. This poem, one of the more timeless among several that are firmly rooted in the present day, revisits the myth of a seal shapeshifter and their offspring. The speaker recounts growing up with their selkie mother, a woman in mourning for the life she had lost, and how she was ultimately returned to her wild roots.