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Helen Charman
Helen Charman is a writer and academic based in Glasgow. Her first book, Mother State – a political history of motherhood — is forthcoming from Allen Lane in 2024. She teaches in the English Studies department at Durham University.

Articles Available Online


Attachment Barbies: On Watching Grey’s Anatomy

Essay

March 2023

Helen Charman

Essay

March 2023

In August 2022, ABC announced that Ellen Pompeo, currently the highest-paid actress on American network television, was leaving Grey’s Anatomy, the show on which...

Book Review

May 2021

HOLDING THE ROOM: ON HOLLY PESTER’S ‘COMIC TIMING’

Helen Charman

Book Review

May 2021

The last poem in Holly Pester’s first collection COMIC TIMING (Granta, 2021) is called ‘Villette’; it shares its title...

SKITAFLIT, DAY 49   704 Dawn Breaks above the grey-dusted grey-fronted houses 903 Well the office is looking just lovely today 916 Crazy Katy has stolen my pencils again 918 Actually she is denying all knowledge of my pencils 920 Still, who else would have stolen a perfectly good set of pencils? Who? 922 Crazy Katy writes, I know you’re writing about me If I want to I’ll go and find it I say, fine, go and find it, whatever 924 Crazy Katy says, I won’t bother, it’s too pathetic But of course she’ll look anyway     1100 Mother Mary and the blessed saints, that was a long meetingmeetingmeeting 1105 This morning I had three meeting meeting meeting and tomorrow I have seven meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting 1109 During the rest of my working life I will have 45,000 meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting meeting 1454 A pause during which I was seized by a mild bout of complete and utter futility but I think it’s passed at least for the time being 1457 At least for now 1516 If a ten tonne truck crashes into us 1517 To die by your side, the pleasure the privilege is mine 1519 I don’t mean by your side, Crazy Katy, not yours – if you’re looking, which I know you are 1523 There is a light that never goes out 1526 I don’t know, perhaps it could be an allegory for faith or hope or something but perhaps it could just mean: 1527 There is a light that never goes out 1735 Thank Christ I am going home     CYN23, DAY 49   901 Oh do not ask me what I am 902 I know what I am 903 I am human I am dynamite     MANNATING, DAY 49   1335 Gorgons awake, I have lost my charger 1405 If it all goes black, it really all goes black 1430 So I have developed a new sense of the temporal continuum 1445 and instead of going forwards I am now going sideways 1446 Crabwise 1501 So in fact these progressions by minute by minute by minute 1504 are not happening in a linear forwards motion but are going along to the side – edging – 1510 and instead of us proceeding onwards to some destination 1511

Contributor

November 2017

Helen Charman

Contributor

November 2017

Helen Charman is a writer and academic based in Glasgow. Her first book, Mother State – a political history...

Essay

May 2020

Where do I put myself, if public life’s destroyed? On reading Denise Riley

Helen Charman

Essay

May 2020

How do you read someone who doesn’t always want to be read? This is a question I used to...

Sally Rooney’s ‘Normal People’

Book Review

October 2018

Helen Charman

Book Review

October 2018

Reading Sally Rooney’s second novel Normal People is a compulsive experience. After the navy blue Faber & Faber proofs were sent out in early...
Rendering intimacy impossible, deploy lifeboats (mark yourself safe) Not listening as such, more waiting to speak, above all mark yourself, it’s so important to be safe Carry on, they demand, we’re not reeling / we are reeling Is this the place for a fountain reference? Probably ‘What first attracted you to your wife, sir?’ ‘Her delicacy / her ankles / her hatred of the Tories’                  Alive twice over but that’s a whole life gone too                you know I’m sorry, he holds his hands up, I’m                sorry, he backs away: my conscience couldn’t                keep company with your body I say, your body?                it just made me think: it’s only a nine month stay   The next time you lay a hand on me, I’ll make a perfect gleaming dive into the Thames Aren’t you glad / to be here? I am
Electioneering

Prize Entry

November 2017

Helen Charman


READ NEXT

fiction

September 2016

STILL MOVING

Lynne Tillman

fiction

September 2016

 I am bound more to my sentences the more you batter at me to follow you. – William Carlos...

Interview

October 2015

Interview with Marine Hugonnier

Izabella Scott

Interview

October 2015

Like the figures found in a spread of Tarot cards, an artist can assume a variety of viewpoints and characters...

fiction

August 2016

Boy With Frog

Kristin Posehn

fiction

August 2016

My first impression was of a tall building laid down for a nap, with all its parts nestled together...

 

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