The Song of the Whole Wide World: On Grief, Motherhood and Poetry

by Tamarin Norwood

An extraordinary memoir of anticipatory grief, seventy-two minutes of life and a silent maternity leave, from artist and academic Tamarin Norwood.

A few months into pregnancy, Tamarin Norwood learned that the baby she was carrying would not live. Over the sleepless weeks that followed, Tamarin, her husband and their three-year-old son tried to navigate the unfamiliar waters of anticipatory sorrow and to prepare for what was to come.

Written partly during pregnancy and partly during the silent maternity leave that followed, The Song of the Whole Wide World is an emergency response to grief held somewhere between the womb, the grave and the many stories that bind stories drawn from medical science, poetry, liturgy, vivid waking dreams of underwater life, and knowledge held deep within the body.

This profoundly moving and intimate account offers a lyrical and fearless meditation on birth, death, and the possibilities of consolation.

Genres: Grief, Memoir

97 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 8, 2024

Reviews

[Silke Vanhoof · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of those rare books proving wrong every claim that some events in life cannot be described in words. Tamarin Norwood, an unmistakable poet, manages to word the unsayable in prose that sings, in an idiosyncratic tone shaped by the contours of unimaginable loss.

[CATHERINE · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful and sensitivly written.

[Andrea T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreakingly beautiful

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, poetic, and very heart breaking inside to something no parent should ever have to go through.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

So beautiful

[Susan Grout · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful!

[Harriet Campbell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astoundingly beautiful

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Took a long break from this book while I was pregnant but it's worthy of five stars. Hauntingly sad, beautiful, and human.

[Macushla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartbreaking and poetic. Read as part of my dissertation “research” and it was very moving.