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Book Cover for: In the Quaker Hotel, Helen Tookey

In the Quaker Hotel

Helen Tookey

A journey through memory and landscape in contemporary verse.

In the title poem, the speaker sits at the window of a small hotel room, a temporary space between memory and possibility. Helen Tookey's In the Quaker Hotel explores questions about the world, rooted in nature and fearful for it.

These poems move through identifiable landscapes--Merseyside, north Wales, Nova Scotia, southern France--to tilted places beyond our immediate reality. As temporary guests in these places and in our own lives, we contemplate who will come after us and how they will see things. Tookey experiments with form and theme, inviting readers to consider:

  • The relationship between memory and place
  • The impact of loss on identity
  • New perspectives on familiar landscapes

Perfect for readers of contemporary poetry and nature writing.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Carcanet Press
  • Publish Date: Jul 28th, 2022
  • Pages: 110
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00lb
  • EAN: 9781800171824
  • Categories: European - English, Irish, Scottish, WelshWomen AuthorsSubjects & Themes - Places

About the Author

Helen Tookey was born near Leicester in 1969. She is now based in Liverpool, where she teaches creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University. She studied philosophy and English literature at university, and has published critical work about writers including Anaïs Nin and Malcolm Lowry. Her debut collection Missel-Child (Carcanet, 2014) was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney First Collection Prize; her second collection City of Departures (Carcanet, 2019) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection.

Praise for this book

'There is an apocalyptic fear coursing through these poems, electrifying them with an often heart-breaking and urgent apprehension of ecological crisis. Through visiting and revisiting, Helen Tookey examines places with a sharp eye, both philosophical and painterly, asking us to attend to their vulnerabilities, their mystery. Behind these carefully made poems, Tookey gives us access to something infinite and disturbing. Delicate, eerie, anxious, prophetic and cinematic, In the Quaker Hotel is a haunting record of our times.' --Seán Hewitt