Following the artist Claude Monet from his early years in Paris to his death in Giverny in 1926, Helen Farish’s fifth collection, Monet’s Broom, takes the reader from Normandy to the Riviera, from London to Venice as Monet dedicates his life to exploring the ‘artistic ground opening up within himself’. In his desire to forge a new art, Monet demonstrated an unshakeable belief in his own gift, a gift which his first wife, Camille, describes as ‘merciless’: ‘Couldn’t we have had a private moment, / just he and I, for once, not he and I and his art?’ By the time Monet moves to Giverny in 1883, it is Alice, the woman who will become his second wife, whose voice joins Monet’s as together they build a new life.
This wide-ranging and immensely readable sequence draws inspiration from a deep engagement with Monet’s life and art, with the circumstances behind the creation of works which millions now visit but which once hung in deserted galleries. In ‘His War Work’, the artist hears the guns of the First World War as he begins his vast water lily panels, at times expressing his grief (‘the brushed-nickel of dusk, / amethyst tree shadows, a dark which proves / the inside of water can be painted’), at other times finding peace in the natural world: ‘the living water / ruffled just now but not by anything / he has thought’.
Two of Helen Farish’s previous four titles were shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, including The Penny Dropping (2024).
Praise for The Penny Dropping:
'It is a virtuosic interrogation of the relationship between lyric and narrative time… Farish keeps alive the immediacy of the vanished present by meticulous relocation of ‘You’ and ‘I’ in space and time…The Penny Dropping is the best love poem anyone has written in years.' – Mimi Khalvati, Anthony Joseph and Hannah Sullivan, T.S. Eliot Prize 2024 Judges
‘I savoured Helen Farish’s tracing of the break-up over time of a loved relationship in The Penny Dropping. Each of the intimate, single-stanza poems acts as a window in this gripping, elegantly achieved, and ultimately very poignant book.’ – Moniza Alvi, The Poetry Society (Books of the Year)
‘The candour and courage of The Penny Dropping should not be underestimated. This is confessional poetry of the highest order.’ – John Field, T.S. Eliot Prize reviewer
'The fifty-two lyric poems that comprise Farish’s fourth collection of poems showcase her virtuosity in this form. They chart the history of a relationship from first meeting to ultimate dissolution and painful aftermath. The narrator – and there is something almost novelistic about her recollections – looks back, in each poem, from the pre-sent, although Farish is at pains to impress on the reader how insecure a vantage point this is. […] a considerable, harrowing achievement.' – Phoebe Walker, The Times Literary Supplement, on The Penny Dropping
'There’s a fluidity and elegance to the writing that carries you along so easily you don’t notice how good it is.' – Annie Fisher, The Friday Poem
'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
Helen Farish reads her title-poem, ‘The Penny Dropping’, in the T.S. Eliot Prize video series featuring the poets with books shortlisted for 2024.
Helen Farish reads her poem, ‘Snow on the Road to Naoussa’ from The Penny Dropping, in the T.S. Eliot Prize video series featuring the poets with books shortlisted for 2024.
Helen Farish reads her poem, ‘The Waste Land’ from The Penny Dropping, in the T.S. Eliot Prize video series featuring the poets with books shortlisted for 2024.
Helen Farish talks about her collection The Penny Dropping in the T.S. Eliot Prize video series featuring the poets with books shortlisted for 2024.
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