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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.

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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...

ADVICE FROM BENJO CORTEZ GALLERY OWNER, CHELSEA THE RED CAT, NEW YORK, 2AM    When I feel something It doesn’t show I got rid of the signs With injections in the forehead I can tell you where to go But not anywhere My eyes got fucked up in Milan Some bitch Can you see the scar?   Keep your skin perfect Put these SkinCeuticals on   Every day Each morning           And I swear   Vitamin B5 Gel Serum 10 Notre Coeur           That one twice a day Daily Moisture           Do that daily Tinted SPF5O, Dead Sea Live Dark Room, RV5, Eska Formula Swallow aloe vera Are you writing this down?   And only eat soup You can put anything in it But only soup   I lost nearly everything   My whole body   And then now Well, now I’m eating this cream mousse It’s all back But that was because of Massimo He disappeared   This was before James Before James I only dated architects           Which Massimo wasn’t He was a model But up until then Architects only He kept saying Massimo kept saying You only want me because I am not an architect Which was true And I told him it was true Otherwise I would date an architect I’m an honest person You should always be honest   But he disappeared I hurt easily He knew this   Now I have James Yes, he’s very young But it’s because he has good skin, He uses all those creams   I used to get jealous But he’s good Knows how not to hurt people His brother just died So he knows           But once He was in a restroom in a club And I was unsure He was in there a long time I knocked, and went away Or pretended I was watching from the sink Looking for signs in the mirror But I was quiet Then I came back, or didn’t because I didn’t go away But I knew he was not in there alone And there was this guy I’d seen him looking at James And so after a while I made James open the door and he was In there Alone   Massimo disappeared though Back to Milan He was from Milan I tracked him down We went to therapy It was at that point Massimo admitted he knew how to hurt me and Sometimes Did it on purpose That’s when I realised Massimo was not a good person I didn’t want to talk anymore But we were always at the therapist Because I had set it up like that And Massimo kept on talking For weeks Until the therapist had to stop him What about Benjo, she said What does Benjo think?       PLEDGE DRIVE   Weightless beside his possessions In bags bound To

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

feature

September 2017

On The White Review Anthology

The Editors

feature

September 2017

Valentine’s Day 2010, Brooklyn: an intern at the Paris Review skips his shift as an undocumented worker at an...

fiction

April 2014

Biophile

Ruby Cowling

fiction

April 2014

– I’m down maybe five feet. I take a moment to thank the leaf-filled rectangle of sky, and with...

Interview

January 2015

Interview with Magdalena Tulli

TR. Bill Johnston

Grzegorz Jankowicz

Interview

January 2015

This interview appeared in Po co jest sztuka? (What Is Art For?), a 2013 collection of interviews with Polish...

 

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