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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...

During his interview with Claudia Rankine in this issue, Kayo Chingonyi raises the subject of what role the arts might play in a period of ‘national emergency’ Discussing artists’ responses to recent tragedies, the two poets agree that ‘to think of [art] as something that happens in seclusion from lived experience feels wrongheaded in the world we live in’ As we put this issue together, this idea has been greatly on our minds, and it resonates throughout the magazine In her piece exploring the ethical implications of prisoners’ visual representations, Hatty Nestor asks ‘how empathy could materialise as visual art’; we hope that the pieces which follow share a spirit of enquiry, compassion and engagement with our complicated times   The past few months – since our fabled summer party on the rooftop of Bold Tendencies, when hundreds crowded onto hay bales to hear Claire-Louise Bennett’s mesmerising reading – have been a period of transition at The White Review This issue appears in a brand new design by Thomas Swann; it is the first under a new editorial team led by Željka Marošević and Francesca Wade We have launched an anthology, featuring highlights from the magazine’s first twenty issues, and a poet’s prize (the winning portfolio, by Lucy Mercer, will be published in Issue 22) In response to a growing concern at the shrinking number of outlets providing accessible and incisive arts coverage, we’ve begun publishing regular reviews of new books and exhibitions online, alongside poetry, fiction, interviews and essays We’ve hatched plans for events across the UK, established new collaborations, and designed some enviable tote bags, now for sale on our revamped website   In this issue, the personal and the political collide in bold and unexpected ways Speaking in advance of her major Tate Modern retrospective, Joan Jonas reflects on a growing sense of environmental consciousness in her performance and installation work Alev Scott reports from the Balkans on the legacy of the Ottoman Empire, while Megan Hunter explores the connections (physical and psychical) between writing and pregnancy We are delighted to present fiction and poetry from a range of new

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

June 2014

Turning the Game Around

Daniel Galera

TR. Rahul Bery

feature

June 2014

Once upon a time there was – no, better: you are a thief who wanders through the cities and...

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...

Art

June 2015

Sisterhood

Chelsea Hogue

Art

June 2015

A woman appears onscreen. Her hair is short. While the film is black and white, by the colour gradations...

 

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