Hannah Hodgson

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Hannah Hodgson longlisted for Lakeland Book of the Year

Left Hannah Hodgson, a white woman with long brown hair and wearing glasses. Right the cover of her book 163 Days.

Seren poet Hannah Hodgson has been longlisted for Lakeland Book of the Year with her debut collection 163 Days. 

Lakeland Book of the Year is an annual award for books which are connected to the Lake District in Cumbria. As a local author, Hannah Hodgson is longlisted alongside authors writing in a variety of genres. 

The 2023 awards will be held at The Inn on the Lake, Glenridding on Tuesday 11th July.

The full longlist is available on the Cumbria Tourism website. The shortlist will be announced soon! 

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Friday Poem – ‘Hide and Seek’ by Hannah Hodgson

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Hide and Seek’ by Hannah Hodgson from her debut collection 163 Days which was recently longlisted for the Barbellion Prize.

This cover shows a photo of artist Sue Austin floating underwater in her wheelchair over a bed of yellow coral. The text reads: 163 Days. Hannah Hodgson.

In her debut collection 163 Days Hannah Hodgson uses a panoply of medical, legal, and personal vocabularies to explore what illness, death and dying does to a person as both patient and witness. In her long poem ‘163 Days’, her longest period of hospitalisation to date, she probes various truths which clash like a tray of dropped instruments in a silent operating theatre. The mundanity of hospital life is marbled by a changing landscape of mood, hope and loss. A gap yawns between the person she is, and the person in her medical notes. In ‘Aftercare’, Hannah navigates the worlds of both nightclubs and hospice care as she embarks on a new version of her life as a disabled adult. An important collection, in which Hodgson’s true voice takes poetry into difficult places.

Hide and Seek My mother learns I’m in trouble when a nurse says Resus like it rhymes with Dr Seuss. Re-seuss. He turns the monitor away from me. My body writing a tell-all-book, the hospital needs to protect me from. I can feel my heart blinking on that screen, flickering as my cursor. The machine keeps alerting the staff towards my apparent death. I’m too shallow to be captured. The doctor spends fifteen minutes trying to get a cannular into one of the branches inside my arm. How many times does a blood pressure cuff need to confirm my consciousness? How many times do I need to tell my mother which of my documents to burn?

163 Days is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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

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Friday Poem – ‘Under One’s Hat’ by Hannah Hodgson

This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Under One’s Hat’ by Hannah Hodgson from her debut collection 163 Days.

This cover shows a photo of the artist Sue Austin diving underwater in her wheel chair. The text reads: 163 Days Hannah Hodgson.

Hannah Hodgon is an award-winning poet and a palliative care patient. In her compelling debut collection 163 Days, she uses a panoply of medical, legal, and personal vocabularies to explore what illness, death and dying does to a person as both patient and witness.  

“Hannah Hodgson takes us to the paradoxical heart of poetry itself” – Caroline Bird

Under One’s Hat My mother thinks my tongue is retractable tape. That I reveal too much, that I’m not good at keeping secrets. One of my friends said the only reason he can keep things quiet, is his body has the handy feature of forgetting. Never registering which truths belong to who, blank pages recorded in place of events. Part of it is my inheritance. My nan is a lethal gossip. I’m a witness to so many lives unspooling, that I’ve stopped waiting for the Police to arrive and collect statements. Truth is slippery. There’s a reason why water polishes riverbeds and stones. I close my mouth around the things I know, lock them inside of me as treasure. I understand now, why NHS noticeboards are laminated. It’s because of blood. Turns out, doctors can’t keep secrets either. They hide them, chirping, tiny birds nesting in their desks; fed by a tiny paintbrush.

163 Days is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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

Listen to a radio play of 163 Days on the BBC New Creative Website