Newborn: Poems on Motherhood

Parenting & Relationships

Kate Clanchy

Family Relationships

Picador

‘Antigona,’ I said. ‘How would you feel if I wrote your life down in a book?’
‘Good,’ she said at once. ‘Good. And then a feature film, actually. Mini-series.’
One morning in London, two neighbours start to chat over the heads of their children. Kate Clanchy is a writer, privileged and sheltered, Antigona is a refugee from Kosovo. On instinct, Kate offers Antigona a job as a nanny, and Antigona, equally shrewdly, accepts. Over the next five years and a thousand cups of coffee Antigona’s extraordinary story slowly emerges. She has escaped from a war, she has divorced a violent husband, but can she escape the harsh code she was brought up with, the Kanun of Lek? At the kitchen table where anything can be said, the women discover they have everything, as well as nothing, in common.
‘Clanchy’s portrait of Antigona is wonderfully vivid, as are her reflections on her own complex feelings. A powerfully written, refreshingly honest work.’ Observer

Antigona and Me

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Picador Paperbacks

Where do we find the words to greet a new arrival In this celebratory book, poet Kate Clanchy has made an inspired choice of poems that speak powerfully of the wonder, joy, bewilderment and mystery that new life brings, from conception through to the first years of parenthood. The Picador Book of Birth Poems is an essential source of inspiration for anyone looking to welcome the new child to the world, and the perfect gift for every new parent as well as a wonderfully moving literary journey in its own right.

Picador Book of Birth Poems

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Picador USA

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Saltire Prize for the Scottish First Book of the Year Clanchy's verse is immediate and musical, and informed by an acute, ironic intelligence. These are poems about men and boys: married men, self-sufficient men, wounded men, and men 'who own/the earth and love it'; poems about memory and time, set in school classrooms and muddy sports fields; and haunting, tender love poems. Clanchy's second collection, Samarkand, was described variously as 'enduringly readable' (Time Out) and 'very rewarding' (Times Literary Supplement). With these two collections, Clanchy has established herself as one of the most impressive and enjoyable of contemporary poets. 'Kate Clanchy is a real discovery. It's possible to imagine her becoming a genuinely popular poet, not because she writes down to her audience, but because she writes of what we know in such a way that we come to know it better, more sharply, in better colours' Helen Dunmore

Slattern

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Literary Giant seeks young man to push bathchair. Own room in Hampstead, all found, exciting cultural milieu. Modest wage. Ideal 'gap year' opportunity. Apply Prys Box 4224XXC. 'It's only England, ' said Mr Fox, 'just a few hours on the train. You can always come home.' 'Ah've never been though, ' said Struan, 'never been South.' 'Then you should, ' said Mr Fox, 'you really should.' So it is that Struan Robertson, orphan, genius, and just seventeen, leaves his dour native town of Cuik, and arrives in London in the freakish fine summer of 1989. His job, he finds, is to care for Phillip, dumbfounded and paralysed by a massive stroke, because, though two teenage children, two wives, and a literary agent all rattle round Phillip's large house, they are each too busy with their peculiar obsessions to do it themselves. As the city bakes, Struan finds himself tangled in a midsummer's dream of mistaken identity, giddying property prices, wild swimming, and overwhelming passions. For everyone, it is to be a life-changing summer. This is a bright book about dark subjects: a tale about kindness and its limits, told with love. Spiked with witty dialogue, and jostling with gleeful, zesty characters, it is a glorious debut novel from an acclaimed writer of poetry, non-fiction, and short stori

Meeting the English

Contemporary

Pan/Macmillan

Literary

The best book on teachers and children and writing that I've ever read. No-one has said better so much of what so badly needs saying.' Philip PullmanKate Clanchy wants to change the world and thinks school is an excellent place to do it. She invites you to meet some of the kids she has taught in her thirty-year career.Join her as she explains everything about sex to a classroom of thirteen-year-olds. As she works in the school ‘Inclusion Unit’, trying to improve the fortunes of kids excluded from regular lessons because of their terrifying power to end learning in an instant. Or as she nurtures her multicultural poetry group, full of migrants and refugees, watches them find their voice and produce work of heartbreaking brilliance.While Clanchy doesn’t deny stinging humiliations or hide painful accidents, she celebrates this most creative, passionate and practically useful of jobs. Teaching today is all too often demeaned, diminished and drastically under-resourced. Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me will show you why it shouldn’t be.

Some Kids I Taught & What They Taught Me

How to Grow Your Own Poem

History & Criticism

Swift Press

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Books by Kate Clanchy