‘You wore a striped blazer in an ironic way.
I wore a long black dress though it was spring
and the night that lay ahead perfumed’– From ‘The borrowing’
My name is Helen Farish, and I’m a poet living in Cumbria. Here you’ll find poems from my three poetry collections, The Dog of Memory (Bloodaxe, 2016), Nocturnes at Nohant: The Decade of Chopin and Sand (Bloodaxe, 2012) and Intimates (Jonathan Cape, 2005).
REVIEW: The Dog of Memory
‘This book is Farish’s third – her debut won the Forward Prize for Best 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 simplicity of Farish’s poetry, its unfussiness and brevity, shine through.’ - TLS
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The Dog of Memory
The dog of memory, an animal more often unbiddable and capricious than it is comforting and predictable, roams the landscapes of its choice: not only place, Helen Farish’s native Cumberland and further afield – mornings in Sicily, night skies in Athens – and people…
Nocturnes at Nohant
It’s December 1836, Paris. Chopin is living on the fashionable rue de la Chaussée d’Antin and the novelist George Sand on the rue Lafitte. But falling in love with Sand also meant falling in love with her ancestral home, Nohant, a manor house set deep in the Berry countryside…
Intimates
Provocative and tender, passionate yet wary, these highly-charged poems testify to the complex nature of relationships with lovers, with family and with the self. Attuned to the expression of a female erotic, the poems speak openly about the emotional and the sexual…