'Today, I shall have a few guests, Madame Sand amongst them.' It's December 1836, Paris. Chopin is living on the fashionable rue de la Chaussee d'Antin and the novelist George Sand on the rue Lafitte. But falling in love with Sand also meant falling in love with her ancestral home, Nohant, a manor house set deep in the Berry countryside. In "Nocturnes at Nohant", we hear not only from Chopin and Sand, but also a rich cast of supporting characters who debate, in their sometimes humorous and often surprising way, the relationship between words and music, place and creativity, and the nature of the creative process itself. The powerful love story which threads the sequence together involves spending time not only in rural France, but also Warsaw, Paris, Majorca and Venice. Helen Farish's debut collection, "Intimates", a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection in 2005. "Nocturnes at Nohant" shows a considerable advance on that achievement, notably with her mastery of voice and narrative.

About the Author

Helen Farish is the author of four books of poems, Intimates (Cape, 2005), Nocturnes at Nohant: The Decade of Chopin and Sand (Bloodaxe Books, 2012), The Dog of Memory (Bloodaxe Books, 2016) and The Penny Dropping (Bloodaxe Books, 2024). Intimates, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. The Dog of Memory was shortlisted for the Lakeland Book of the Year 2017. Helen Farish was also a Writer of the Year Finalist in the Cumbria Life Culture Awards 2017. Her PhD thesis explored the work of Louise Gluck and Sharon Olds. She has taught at Sheffield Hallam University and Lancaster University, and now lives in Cumbria.

Reviews
'Intimates is a passionate book. Its theme is ancient (the unthinkable pain of lost love) and Farish thinks hard about both pain and happiness. Much of Farish's art lies in concealment. The economy of her poems and her confidence in their means enable her to speak with convincing directness where other poets might lapse into gestures' - Sean O'Brien, Sunday Times. 'Farish uses the first-person speaker with a moving immediacy - as often in the poems that address the death of her father - or deploys it with considerable inventiveness and ingenuity - Intimates is an intensely lyrical work. Farish is adept at conveying a moment of being in a handful of pared, precise images, and she can sometimes astonish with a single line' - Jane Griffiths, TLS. 'A debut poetry collection by a poet whose voice is already mature, assured and at times very funny' - Claire Harman, Evening Standard. 'These are intelligent, brave pieces that make you wince and smile' - Jackie Kay, Sunday Herald Books of the Year.



Book Information
ISBN 9781852249410
Author Helen Farish
Format Paperback
Page Count 72
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 138mm * 6mm