Description
Book SynopsisHelen Farish has won the Forward Poetry Prize for best first collection and been shortlisted for the T.S.Eliot Prize. She lives in Cumbria and was Poet-in-Residence at the Wordsworth Trust, Grasmere in 2004.
Trade ReviewCan there have been a more arresting opening to a debut collection than Helen Farish's 'Look at These'? Between this and her beautiful closing walk along the Coffin Path, we're treated to a whip-smart, tough lyricism, which is always alloyed by her sense of shape and economy. It's been ages since I've read a first book of poems as bold, carried off with such élan -- Paul Farley
The intimacy of Helen Farish's poems is of an extraordinary kind: at once close to and distant from family and body and thought. The poems are bodily and disembodied, emotionally engaged and detached, passionate and reasoned. Nobody writes with quite this variety of intelligence.
Intimates is a stunning debut -- Bernard O'Donoghue
This is a brave book: it faces up to life at every turn. It celebrates, it laments, it answers back. Helen Farish writes with extraordinary candour, wittily, movingly, with sensuous intelligence -- David Constantine
Her seemingly throwaway lines let the pain come through because of the subtle expressiveness of her pauses -- Derwent May * Times Weekend Review *
Farish is a sensitive explorer of the nuances of relationships...
Intimates is full of evocative atmospheres -- Stephen Knight * Independent on Sunday *
