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...

1 российский захватчик, забывший о воинской чести, бойся женского заговора и женской мести, бойся украинских девочек с бутылками зажигательной смеси, бойся наших женщин, особенно в чужом незнакомом месте тебя не звали, не приглашали, не ждали, танчикам твоим допотопным открутят педали, сорвут твою маску, расцарапают тебе морду, наши длинные ногти давно уже вошли в моду наши тонкие пальцы привыкли к технике кухни, она сложнее твоих тупых машин, чтоб твои вены вспухли, чтоб тебя кондрашка хватила у чужого жилого дома, чтоб ты остался под обломками взорванного аэродрома, чтоб ты не вышел из танка, чтоб тебе на шею шина, у украинской женщины работает посудомоечная машина, на столе паровой утюг, в кухне – духовка, электроварка, а тебя кроме стрелять ничему не научили припарка наши женщины бинтуют раны, плетут маскировочные сети, против тебя дурака, в чужой стране ты один на свете чтоб твоя немытая жизнь стала вечной мукой позора, мы не слушали соловьева, мы читали Кафку и Кьеркегора, мы не простим тебя любого, запомни, паскуда мы уже красим ногти и, пока не поздно, вали отсюда     Russian invader, forget all about chivalry, Fear female revenge and female conspiracy, Fear Ukrainian girls, Molotov cocktails in hand, Fear our women, above all in this strange foreign land They didn’t call or invite you, they weren’t waiting for you Keep an eye on your obsolete tank—they’ll unscrew The pedals, rip off your mask, scratch off your face Our long nails are the latest in fashion and grace, Our slender fingers accustomed to kitchen complexity— That’s harder than your dumb vehicles To give you apoplexy, To strike you dead in the house that is someone else’s home, To keep you under the rubble of the bombed-out airdrome, To stop you getting out of the tank, put you in a cervical collar— In a Ukrainian woman’s home, there’s a working dishwasher, An iron on the table, a slow cooker with a steam valve But you know nothing but shooting, nothing of salve Our women bind up wounds, their camouflage nets unfurl To fight you, you fool— in a foreign country, alone in the world To turn your uncleansed life into an eternal torment of shame We ignored Solovyov and read—Kafka and Kierkegaard, by name Remember, we’ll forgive nothing, you scumbags, so flee your fate We’re painting our nails now Get out of here–before it’s too late     2 Сегодня другая война Не та, что была вчера Сегодняшняя тяжелее

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

July 2015

Talk Into My Bullet Hole

Rose McLaren

feature

July 2015

‘Someday people are going to read about you in a story or a poem. Will you describe yourself for...

Interview

October 2013

Interview with Chris Petit

Hannah Gregory

Interview

October 2013

Chris Petit likes driving. Most of his films, from his first Radio On (1979), to London Orbital (with Iain...

Interview

June 2013

Interview with Lars Iyer

David Morris

Interview

June 2013

Like so much of the dialogue that marks time across Lars Iyer’s books, this conversation began in the pub....

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required