When Claude Monet died in 1926 he left behind over three thousand works of art, and in his last decade he was exploring as rigorously as in his early years what a painting could be.
Helen Farish’s poems in Monet’s Broom emerge from a deep absorption in the work of this extraordinary artist who revered that most fragile and fleeting of things: the present moment. The inspiration for her collection is wide-ranging, drawing not only on the art itself, but also on the day Monet purchased the land which enabled him to create his water garden; or a photograph of the unvisited Musée de l’Orangerie in the 1930s; or an imagining of the trains which transported his painting materials during the First World War; or the voices of the grainstacks which stood in a field behind Monet’s house and which spoke to him of the ‘mournful kernel at the heart / of all human joy’.
When life finally gave Monet ‘a place to bite into’, he moved to Giverny with Alice Horschedé whose powerful voice, along with that of his first wife, Camille Doncieux, threads the narrative together.
This ambitious and immensely readable fifth collection from Helen Farish asks searching questions about the creative process and what it means to lead a fully creative life. Two of her previous collections 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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