Straight Ahead

by Clare Shaw

These poems capture intimacy, loss, fragmentation, and delight - being alive in all its colors. The book follows the trajectory of a life through childhood, breakdown, and love, recording on the way the million sufferings and hopes of everyday life. The poems move rapidly between contrasting experiences and emotions, from violence to madness, yet are held together by Clare Shaw's ever-present love of language, her celebration of sound, rhythm and imagery. Shaw has personal experience with mental instability, having suffered frequent admissions to psychiatric wards in her young adulthood. These experiences motivated her to fight to improve mental health services. Through work, postgraduate study, publications, and activism, she has become a recognized voice on women's mental health issues.

Genres: Poetry

63 pages, Paperback

First published February 15, 2006

About the author

Clare Shaw was born in Burnley in 1972. Her first two collections were Straight Ahead (2006), which was shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex New Writers’ Award for Poetry and attracted a Forward Prize Highly Commended for Best Single Poem, and Head On (2012), which according to the Times Literary Supplement is 'fierce, memorable and visceral'. Her third collection, Flood, is published by Bloodaxe in June 2018. She is a Royal Literary Fellow, and a regular tutor for the Writing Project, the Poetry School, the Wordsworth Trust and the Arvon Foundation. She also works as a mental health trainer and consultant and has taught and published widely in the field, including Our Encounters with Self-Injury (eds. Baker, Biley and Shaw, PCCS 2013) and Otis Doesn't Scratch (PCCS 2015), a unique storybook resource for children who live with self-injury. Clare lives in Hebden Bridge with her daughter and their two pet rats; she enjoys rock climbing and wild swimming in cold and beautiful places.

Reviews

[J Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love Clare and all their work.