#IBuyYourPamphlet: WEEK 6

‘Sagrada Familia’
by Helen Anderson

You nod as if you know loss, too / You don’t tell.

Helen Anderson is a writer of memoir, fiction, and poetry. Based in the North East of England, she has an MA in Creative Writing from Teesside University and is the founder of the Saltburn Writers Group. She won the People Not Borders Short Story Competition in 2018, as well as the Ink Tears Flash Fiction Contest 2015, and the Bridgwater Home Start Short Story Competition in 2013, which was judged by Dame Margaret Drabble.

This was the last pamphlet I received as part of my Nine Pens Press crowdfunding deal from 2022, and it’s a stonker, not just for the quality of content, but the emotional heft if carries. It also made for sobering and difficult reading. There’s a great deal laid bare here, and I, for one, feel that’s something more poets should be aiming to present in their work.

What’s in it for Me?

The opening poem, Seasoned, is an expositional punch to the gut: if you noticed who these poems are dedicated to, the work that follows will provide graphic details of how both are no longer in the Poet’s life. The next group of pieces colour in parts of a whole that has been lost, taken away and still leaves two indelible, painful holes. Of this selection, Counsel is the strongest, a taut and restrained reflection on the layers we carry emotionally.

By the time you reach How to Grow a Widow there is a palpable sense of how Anderson has been shaped by trauma, and how it is now stitched within every word of her existence. From the inescapable guilt in Two Years Older to what remains behind after loss in Old For New, every poem is a part of a litany to existence, and how we cope as humans when our loved ones are lost.

I have heard it said that art often finds you in times of stress and worry and provides you with what is needed to move forward from its careful study. This poetry for me has been strength personified, a constant reminder that life continues after death. How we deal with that and how that fuels our progress becomes a measure of fortitude and belief. This is a superb, solid and uncompromising treatise on love and grief.

Personal Favourites

Next Best Thing for the imagery
Restricted Palette for the inference
How to Grow a Widow for the impact

Any Other Business

I’m currently going through my own trauma journey, and this pamphlet has taught me a great deal. It is also a salutatory reminder that the right language can and will find you if you allow that to happen. There is warmth and familiarity, understanding and genuine care in every stanza, and it remains a fitting and impressive eulogy to the daughter and husband Anderson has lost. To be able to write so brilliantly is a mark of a poet who truly understands the power of emotion in context.