Small

Disgrifiad Cymraeg / Welsh Description

Cyfrol o farddoniaeth bardd ifanc sy'n enedigol o Abertawe. Mae Natalie Ann Holborow yn archwilio ellyllon ein hisymwybod, gan ddychmygu teimladau tywyll cymeriadau amrywiol megis Romeo a Juliet, Hamlet ac Andromache.

Disgrifiad Saesneg / English Description

We all have our favourite demons. A desperate Romeo circles the bushes below Juliet's balcony, hoping for a glimpse of her bare body, 'nipples stiffening on powdered ribs'. Adamant of his own sanity, Hamlet chatters away to his oldest friend - the squat skull grinning in his palm. Andromache screams for her only child, 'spiralling like sycamore' from the walls of Troy.

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Bywgraffiad yr Awdur / Author Biography

Natalie Ann Holborow is a writer, digital content specialist and co-editor of the Cheval anthology. She was 2015 winner of both the Terry Hetherington Award and Robin Reeves Prize and has been shortlisted and commended for various others including the Bridport Prize, the National Poetry Competition and the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine. Her debut collection, And Suddenly You Find Yourself, was launched at the Kolkata International Book Festival, and was listed as one of Wales Arts Review's 'Best of 2017'. She recently came runner-up in Swansea Poetry Slam. Her blog, Running on Insulin, is where she posts experiences and advice for others living with type 1 diabetes.

Adolygiad y Cyhoeddwr / Publisher Review

This second collection of poems from multi-award-winning writer Natalie Holborow is often shocking in its honesty, sometimes playful, sometimes lyrical, but carrying a freight of suffering which makes the reader wonder at her energy and positivity. Holborow has suffered from type 1 diabetes since childhood and a few of the poems describe this experience – her memory of receiving the diagnosis and what hyperglycaemia is like – but this is not the main subject. Small is the invisible demon she lives with – the eating disorder anorexia – which she personifies as an imp ‘with the mannerisms of a tantruming, needy child’ and which clings on to her, ‘difficult ... but still mine.’ The majority of the poems concern living with Small , unsuccessfully trying to lose ‘her’ through therapy, and also losing her marriage (and perhaps a child) because of Small ’s hold on her life. Holborow has said that ‘ Small is only quiet when I’m running’, and two poems refer to this, but the impression is of her running past other lives – she observes them in vivid detail, but in ‘20’ the running is desperate (‘eighteen miles / is an act of casual hell.’) The Small poems can often be horrific, as in ‘ Small loses Sleep’: there is a strange playfulness in the imp – ‘she giggles. She flounces. / The stupid act splits me to ounces.’ – but it reduces her victim in more than physical ways. The poem ‘Girl’ is not a Small poem but reveals a widespread cultural attitude which disposes girls to the danger: the worship of childhood ‘innocence’, ‘ Small ness’, ‘the flat, clean island of her body’, and ends in ‘worshipping ignorance’ – a path that should not be followed. Some of the most painful poems concern her break-up with her husband. In ‘ Small Sends him Packing’ he cries out, ‘how can I reach you ... when she’s circled you in glass?’ Not only is Small fighting him for Natalie but Small has made her too fragile for love. He drives away ‘from this horrible thing cleaved to my waist.’ Some of these poems are defiant, like ‘Confession’, but ‘Physical’ suggests the depth of her loss and ‘Attics’ the slowness of healing. Amongst the Small poems are groups on a variety of subjects. Holborow’s visit to India gives poems that are rich in colour, sensation and the feeling of foreignness. The group around the Nativity has charm and wit. There are tributes to friends and other poets, particularly ‘Cwtch’, written for two friends who have become as close as sisters. One of the last poems is ‘Fountains’, in which she sees herself as a fountain with a ‘heart / like a pool boiling dry, having given too much / for too long.’ But it asserts that ‘water can carry invented / selves back to the heart.’ Holborow is known not only for her poetry but for her blogs and her mentoring of other writers. She might well feel, young as she is, that she is boiling dry, but even with her indestructible incubus, she hangs on to ‘the affirmation … that life goes on’.