Giraffe

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Friday Poem – ‘Dear Anne Monroe, Healthcare Assistant’ by Bryony Littlefair

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Dear Anne Monroe, Healthcare Assistant’ by Bryony Littlefair from her Mslexia prize-winning pamphlet Giraffe.

Giraffe Bryony Littlefair

Poems need head, heart, and soul but this particular pamphlet has an extra ingredient – a feminist kick. There is a good deal of wit on display, but also a wonderful humanity. There are also other novelistic qualities: clarity of language and the use of realism, a feeling for plot and incident, an eye and ear for character. The author indicates emotion and relationships in a myriad of subtle ways: heartbreak can be summarised by one glance at the ‘Lido’. Love can be inferred by the tender description of someone from the back, as they are walking away. Giraffe, the title and a euphemism for happiness, is a beguiling, beautiful and entertaining debut pamphlet of poems.

Giraffe is available on the Seren website: £5.00

Create your free Seren account and enjoy 20% off every book you buy from us.

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Friday Poem – ‘Dear Anne Monroe, Healthcare Assistant’, Bryony Littlefair

Friday Poem Bryony Littlefair Dear Anne Monroe NHS

July 2018 marks 70 years of the National Health Service Act and the NHS. In celebration, acclaimed poet Owen Sheers has produced a new ‘film-poem’ showing twenty-four hours in the NHS, ‘To Provide All People’ – now available to watch on BBC iPlayer. This week’s Friday Poem by Bryony Littlefair, ‘Dear Anne Monroe, Healthcare Assistant’, also gives us a glimpse inside our healthcare system.

Giraffe Bryony LittlefairAn apology opens this powerful poem, in which a healthcare assistant faces up to a patient’s pre-op fear and resistance: ‘I’m sorry that my sister will not let you take her blood/ for the operation that will save her life.’ Everyday struggles are presented in a stark light: the ‘gulped-down cheese and lettuce/ sandwich’, the intrusive questioning of ‘where it is you’re from originally’.
The politics in Littlefair’s poems are mostly implicit in the stories told, only occasionally bursting through like an urgent message. Giraffe, her Mslexia Prize-winning pamphlet, expertly merges the poet’s wit and wonderful humanity with novelistic qualities and a feminist kick: this is a beguiling, beautiful and entertaining debut.

Bryony Littlefair Dear Anne Monroe NHS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giraffe is available from the Seren website: £5.00

Join our free Book Club for 20% off every book you buy from us.

 

 

Posted on by

Friday Poem – ‘Giraffe’, Bryony Littlefair

Friday Poem Giraffe Bryony Littlefair

Our Friday Poem this week is the title poem from Bryony Littlefair’s Mslexia Prize-winning debut pamphlet, Giraffe.

Giraffe Bryony LittlefairPoems need head, heart, and soul but this particular pamphlet has an extra ingredient – a feminist kick. There is a good deal of wit on display, but also a wonderful humanity. There are also other novelistic qualities: clarity of language and the use of realism, a feeling for plot and incident, an eye and ear for character. The author indicates emotion and relationships in a myriad of subtle ways: heartbreak can be summarised by one glance at the ‘Lido’. Love can be inferred by the tender description of someone from the back, as they are walking away.
Giraffe, the title and a euphemism for happiness, is a beguiling, beautiful and entertaining debut pamphlet of poems.

 

Giraffe Bryony Littlefair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giraffe is half price in the Seren January Sale until 11 January: £2.50

Join our free Book Club for 20% off every book you buy from us after the sale ends.