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...

To Miquel   I possess my death She is in my hands and within the spirals of my inner ears She is in the balls of my eyes because she is my eyes If you are having a bad day, my eyes are also your death My death creeps carefully around the spiral of your inner ear and pushes out buds through the branches of your fingers   He met Misaki Konishi in his living room When he entered Misaki was squatting down, reading The servant barely cleared his throat before announcing the visitor’s name: Itakura no Goro The old man raised his face and made a slight movement of the head in the direction of his guest He responded martially Ask my wife to prepare the tea The servant disappeared behind the sliding door Misaki tried to stand up Aren’t you going to help me? he said The samurai hurried to do so, looking away so as not to humiliate him Now standing, the old man placed a hand on his lower back and gave a bow, possibly ironic, to which Itakura once again responded in earnest The old man smiled: I see that your heart remains in Kyushu; you are from Kyushu, no? From Nagoya You are among friends The old man purposefully looked towards his stick, which had been left on the floor The samurai stepped forward to pick it up, and held it out to him A beautiful city, Nagoya; I’m from a fishing village; they call me Misaki because that’s where I’m from; the name with which I was born is Ogata, Ogata Konishi Itakura nodded, barely closing his eyes, which made the old man smile again I tell you, you’re among friends, he said Leaning on his stick, he indicated the panel which opened to the garden, at the back of the living room   To Itakura it seemed that, more than being old, Misaki represented age itself Did you leave any family behind in Nagoya? he asked A wife, and two male children They’ll have opportunities in the city, they won’t be forced to do as

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

September 2014

Interview with Laure Prouvost

Alice Hattrick

Interview

September 2014

Laure Prouvost begins to tell us about something that happened this morning. She woke up with four vegetables on...

poetry

April 2014

Obsolescence

Joseph Mackertich

poetry

April 2014

A lot of people tell me my voice is similar to that of the actor Christopher Walken. I don’t...

poetry

June 2014

Death on Rua Augusta

Tedi López Mills

TR. David Shook

poetry

June 2014

Translator’s Note Death on Rua Augusta is a book I knew I would translate before I had even finished...

 

Get our newsletter

 

* indicates required