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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...

1 Cessation of Breath: Is He Breathing?   He’s not breathing, and he cannot go on like this He needs air Mouth-to-mouth is a fool’s game: you must not believe that you have enough air for the both of you The body should supply itself, but in this it can be encouraged Breath begets breath, and life life One O says yes to another O and that equals oxygen One god nods to the next god, who nods to the next and so on Therefore plant plants, as follows: (i) The chest is just a gathering of shapes as it is, and it knows full well what it means to be a shrubbery There is depth and breadth enough for soil, and it lends itself naturally to inhabitance From there to conurbation Drop seeds and sow It grows in spite of itself (ii) The extremities are a framework already in place: honeysuckles, for example, thrive on the order inherent in limbs; fingers are the beginnings of mathematics, and you will find the sweetpea loops nicely to a ring; ivies are many and incessant (iii) The holes of the head are a blessing Eye sockets, in particular, are favourable to succulents 2 Cardiac Arrest: Is There Any Rhythm to Him?   They say: cut the wood yourself and it will warm you twice It is the same for the heart – if you beat it, it will beat And it is the same with blood – it won’t move unless you move it This is the kind of work that must be done by hand This is monks and manuscripts This is sculpture This is the work your father did, is where you came from (i)        Locate the heart by feeling (ii)       Trace out the gridlocked veins (iii)      Prepare the bell for pealing (iv)       Make fists and take your aim (v)        Pound it till it feels like kissing (vi)       Push the blood between your hands (vii)    

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

Interview

April 2017

Interview with Mark Greif

Daniel Cohen

Interview

April 2017

Since 2004, when his work started to appear in n+1, the magazine he co-founded, Mark Greif has taken contemporary...

poetry

Issue No. 4

Mysteries of Music

Michael Horovitz

poetry

Issue No. 4

Having absently, that’s to say dozily switched on BBC Radio 3 down in the kitchen as is my frequent...

feature

Issue No. 13

Under a Bright Red Star

Federico Campagna

feature

Issue No. 13

Five is a number dense with theological significance. Five are the books of the Torah, five the wounds of...

 

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