REVIEW ‘Larchfield’: poetry, loneliness, guilt and madness

Motherhood. Poetry. Madness – or time travel? Welcome to Helensburgh – home to the young English poet W.H Auden and, years later, English poetess, Dora Fielding, in (English poet) Polly Clark’s emotionally fraught debut novel. What’s it about? Newly married and pregnant, Dora moves to Helensburgh hoping that her new life will engage her as […]

April 30, 2017 Book Reviews, Fiction, Literature Read More →

National Poetry Day 2015

Today is National Poetry Day and it’s got me thinking about the value of sharing poems. Children instinctively love poems. They enjoy the rhythms, the humour, the sheer nonsense of nursery rhymes and their early introductions to poems. Then, something happens. For most older children poetry becomes academic, boring, uncool. It’s something your teacher might […]

October 8, 2015 Book chat Read More →