‘With my Lips pressed to the Ear of the Earth’ by Charlotte Baldwin


someone should do something / we all nod / no one moves
Charlotte Baldwin works on a national project supporting young people’s mental health and as a creative writing tutor & dog walker. As Gypsy Rose Poetry, she travels London visiting people living in isolation to talk about their lives and write poems for them. Her poetry has appeared in the Elements anthology from Fawn Press, The North, Under the Radar, Shearsman, Lighthouse and Tears in the Fence, among others.
I have always believed that the best poetry has the strongest impact when the reader is most open to receive it, and never when it is come to cold. In this case, there was a sense of serendipity as Charlotte’s work came up this week. It has sat in my mind for a while, and only now are there words to describe it. Maybe this isn’t the best approach to take as a reviewer, but the very best work takes time to move to maturity. We are now ready to do this review the justice it deserves.
What’s in it for Me?
Until this pamphlet, I’d never considered my own work as confessional: for me, it’s a reporting of fact as was seen, with all the bias and inconsistency that presents. However, when reading someone else’s work, where history presented as anything but simple recollection, confessional is the word that has been missing as a descriptor. Charlotte’s mind and experience are laid out here for all to see without fear or anguish. The straightforward and almost analytical approach make the fantastical all the more amazing. This collection literally has something for everybody.
Between The Bronte Sisters At Dinner (absolutely not where you think) and I shit a white rabbit (which is literal, figurative and damning) the range, complexity and artistry of the work here is impressive. From concrete pieces to the conversational discomfort of The Obligations of Confessional Poetry (I do love a good footnote in a poem) this is never just words on a page, stanzas in a sequence. It becomes the unfolding of a complex and exacting mind, that knows all too well how to hide a hit of emotional heft in exactly the right places.
Allowing yourself to inhabit someone else’s confessions and them, in turn, unlocking the same in yourself, remains one of the most potent uses of poetry as therapy. To experience moments yourself may be hard, but if one can find a similar experience of somebody else’s… then there is the opportunity to allow words to heal hurt. There’s a reason why Charlotte’s review has more paragraphs than normal this week, and again why it took so long to write. I have lived inside these lines myself, and am grateful for the space.
What Baldwin presents here is a unique perspective of their life and experience, a reminder that we all don’t do enough, or are left wanting, or feel weighed upon by the breath of societal and generational expectation. To free yourself, honesty is the most effective cure, and the honesty displayed here accomplishes that and so much more. This is a collection of masterful recall, from someone who has learnt to listen not just to the World but to themselves with equal significance.
It is a pamphlet precisely filled with honest and rare brilliance.

Personal Favourites
An Ill Wind for the imagery
Eco Therapy for the inference
The Obligations of Confessional Poetry for the impact
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