The Penny Dropping
Drawing on powerful and universal themes, The Penny Dropping traces the journey of a relationship from first meeting to eventual break-up.
Distance and maturity give retrospective access to moments of revelation which went fatally unacknowledged or unheeded at the time and which now return with an insistence impossible to ignore. But if the penny drops years too late, these poems are their own implicit argument for the value of revisiting our pasts if only in order to acquire a fuller, more complete presence in the now.
Hovering over the collection is Eliot's final question in The Waste Land: 'Shall I at least set my lands in order?' And as Helen Farish applies herself to the task, her unflinching yet compassionate voice has never been more in evidence. From the elation of the opening 'Things We Loved' to the acceptance and humour of 'Of All My Losses', much is at stake on every page.
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'The Penny Dropping, Helen Farish's verse-sequence about a love
relationship, could be called a page-turner if it weren't for the fact
that every page is a lyric poem of such compulsion that it unfailingly
and hauntingly detains the reader's attention. As a whole, it has all
the coherence of a novel; but there is so much more to this beautifully
realised lyric collection of the kind that she is a recognised master
of. It is a masterpiece in both forms to a very unusual degree.' - Bernard O'Donoghue
'This book is Farish's third - her debut won the Forward Prize for First Collection - and it is a confident performance. Farish's poems have balance, and a smiling stride; they take their time (and seldom too much).... The Dog of Memory is an intriguing offering from Helen Farish, evidence above all of a poet... working out what to do with the strange and beautiful things laid at her feet by her own capacity for recall.' - Leaf Arbuthnot, Times Literary Supplement
'Her locations are as varied as you'd expect from a well-travelled, sharp-eyed twenty-first century poet, but her native Cumbria is the source she constantly returns to, slowing the tempo to savour its place-names and define its subtle colours... A rare combination of elegiac feeling, humour, and earthy reminiscence characterises Farish's poems.' - Carol Rumens, The Poetry Review [on The Dog of Memory]
'Helen Farish knows intimately who she is and her beautiful poems capture the intense sadness of memories recalled as the years pass. The poems are wonderfully, closely crafted. She is possessed by memory, but it is a memory that is both painful and illuminating. They are poems which are deeply felt, and though they read as though they draw intensely on her own life, their power to move comes from their reticence, from what is not said, but is deeply understood and quietly acknowledged.' - Steve Matthews, Cumberland News [on The Dog of Memory]
'Nocturnes at Nohant: The decade of Chopin and Sand is an original extremely intelligent working through of a complex relationship between two artists and their work. I loved the poems. The sequence works so well as a story and is so nuanced I felt completely absorbed in it. And full of admiration for Farish's great skill.' - Melvyn Bragg
"'This book is Farish's third - her debut won the Forward Prize for First Collection - and it is a confident performance. Farish's poems have balance, and a smiling stride; they take their time (and seldom too much).... The Dog of Memory is an intriguing offering from Helen Farish, evidence above all of a poet... working out what to do with the strange and beautiful things laid at her feet by her own capacity for recall." --Leaf Arbuthnot, Times Literary Supplement
