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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...

I met John at the dance summer school He was standing at the lower set of doors towards the bottom of the hall, half-in, half-out, as if he was hoping to be missed Cherri was sitting on the empty stage The other girls had left half an hour ago When she saw her father, Cherri picked up her yellow rucksack and walked towards us, her chunky pink trainers squeaking on the old lino The building had once been a theatre and now served as a community centre As she walked across the hall, I turned to him Mr Smithley, I said, unable to finish my sentence I wanted to say that he should have been there earlier It did something to a child, always waiting for their parents But he smiled, as though he had been expecting me, not the other way around I fingered my pendant, readjusted my neckline I could not tell what he wanted exactly: men were often baffled by my fantastical appearance in a banal environment   He peered at the name badge pinned on my dress Vashti, he said Call me John He held out his hand and, after a second, I had to withdraw mine because it started burning So, he said, looking around me but not focusing on anything What will my daughter learn in the next few months? Barbara’s Premier Touring Dance School Makes Winners in the Essex Region, he read aloud from the promo poster tacked on the wall Cherri waited, rubbing her itchy-looking ankles together She looked nothing like John, with her red skin and fuzzy blonde hair He frowned at her, like she was a fossil in a museum or something else that had once been interesting The girls learn to dance and sing, I replied And even if they don’t go on to a career, they leave with our ethos to guide them through life What’s the ethos? he asked, baring small white teeth Confidence, composure and commitment, I said His confrontational manner implied great self-assurance or deep insecurity I could not yet tell them apart   Have you had a

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

February 2015

In bed with the radio

Péter Závada

TR. Mark Baczoni

poetry

February 2015

IN BED WITH THE RADIO   You’d turned against me. There’s safety in knowing, I thought. Like lying in...

poetry

March 2013

The Humming Lady

James Byrne

poetry

March 2013

The humming lady arrives in a smiling orange smock and orders from the waiter a plate of overripe oranges,...

poetry

April 2014

Lives of the Saints

Luke Neima

poetry

April 2014

‘I’m tending to this dead tree,’ he tells me. Last time he was rolling the hard rocks down into...

 

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