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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...

Hello Dr Rivers’ clinic? Thank you Yes Yes, doctor, I would like to be your patient With your permission, of course No It was Doctor Rosenthal who recommended you to me Yes, she and her husband, I’ve known them for a while They’re going to spend a year in Florence In a few days, I think That’s why she didn’t want to take me on Besides, it’s not advisable among friends, she said I’ve worked with him No, I’m not a poet I’m a filmmaker I write screenplays Well, that’s part of the problem I don’t want to write anymore, but I don’t know what else to do Can I? I suppose so No, nothing I’ve written has been produced, but almost Someone optioned one of my screenplays Of course, it’s better than nothing Maybe with a little more luck It was an action movie A sort of film noir, but set in the jungle, in Guatemala I’m from there El Petén It’s a wonderful place Have you been to the jungle? It’s a singular thing If you haven’t been you don’t know what I’m talking about The vegetation, the life, the energy everywhere Yes, I get excited talking about it In black and white Supposedly I was going to direct it, but the investors backed out at the last moment Yes, safety concerns By a stroke of bad luck, the producer was there when they lynched a North American woman A photographer She was in a little town, taking pictures of some kids Someone started the rumour that she was kidnapping kids You know, there have been cases For illegal adoption agencies, or for specialty brothels, and they say they are even used to supply the organ market Unthinkable, you said it But that’s what happened and the project fell through Money? Well, yes, I mean no, money isn’t really a problem at all Rich, not what you would call rich, no My father? My father yes, he was rich No, he died a long time ago He was killed It’s a bit of a complicated story Around,

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

poetry

September 2011

The Moon over Timna

Rikudah Potash

TR. Michael Casper

poetry

September 2011

In a copper house Lived the new moon, The new moon Of Timna. In a copper coat With a...

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...

poetry

February 2011

Mainly about Roth

Aidan Cottrell Boyce

poetry

February 2011

From the start he was thrown in at the deep-end when the head keeper just handed him a pail...

 

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