Mailing List


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...

It’s Saturday and two men arrive at the door in the uniform Thames Water We’re checking the whole street, can we check your pipes They walk through to   the back Their boots are very large in the flat A dog stretches her neck and smells the air around the genitals They are sorry We are sorry but we have   some bad news We have detected some contamination coming from one of the addresses on this street and it’s you Your clean water and your waste pipes are   misconnected Your waste pipe is going straight to The new river opened in 1613 to bring fresh water from Hertfordshire to London Don’t worry it’s not your   fault and we’re not going to fine you But it is illegal and you have to fix it What it You’re it Your waste pipe Your water pipe Our waste Our pipe Your waste   pipe is misconnected and your cistern is flowing into the clean water of the New River opened in 1613 to bring fresh water from Hertfordshire to London There   are two types of sewer private and public Private sewers belong to the customer You You are responsible for the pipes that belong to you There are   public sewers that belong to us the water company We are the water company Also there are highway drains and gullies And you know, swans Are you related   to a plumber, No Are you friends with one, No, Then you’re going to have to hire one The men leave I haven’t been yet me neither you go I didn’t expect the   shame of ownership to be so closely related to the shame of having a body (But it’s not mine none of it’s mine) In 1946 the water supply to New River Head was   truncated at Stoke Newington with the New River ending at the East Reservoir We do customer shits straight into the West Reservoir Water Sports Centre is a   water sports and environmental education centre which is located in a picturesque corner of leafy Stoke Newington The centre provides the   opportunity to take part in sailing and kayaking for adults and children under the watchful eye of expert instructors

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

June 2013

The Cherry Tree

Sheila Heti

fiction

June 2013

That winter, all the plums froze. All the peaches froze and all the cherries froze, and everything froze so...

Interview

Issue No. 1

Interview with Mai-Thu Perret

Timothée Chaillou

Interview

Issue No. 1

Swiss artist Mai-Thu Perret’s ongoing, fourteen year-old project The Crystal Frontier is a multi-disciplinary fiction chronicling the lives of...

fiction

May 2012

Hunt for American Heiress Continues...

Seraphina Madsen

fiction

May 2012

Hunt for American Heiress Continues With Bizarre Manuscript Found in Cave in Altamira By ALICE SHIFT 7:00 AM ET...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required