The Hopeful Hat

Carole Satyamurti

Paperback

Regular price$16.95With free membership trial$8.4850% off your first book+ Free shipping

In Stock– Ships within one business day

Do you recommend this book?

Yes!

The Hopeful Hat is a posthumous collection from a poet whose work is informed by her keen eye for social injustice and, equally, by the breadth of her compassion.

Poignantly, these late poems are also Satyamurti's nuanced poetic response to having her voice box removed following a diagnosis of laryngeal cancer. Clear-eyed in the face of her own mortality, she produced a series of courageous poems that are, as Carol Ann Duffy said of her work, 'laced with the hard stuff'. They are also graced with Satyamurti's unique and subtle wit.

Carole Satyamurti was preparing these poems for publication at the time of her death, and left the manuscript in an advanced state of readiness. The sequencing of the poems, and the sections they are grouped in, had already been decided by her.

Book Details

Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
Publish Date: May 9th, 2023
Pages: 80
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.30in - 0.40in - 0.25lb
EAN: 9781780376530
Categories: • European - English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh• Women Authors• Subjects & Themes - Death, Grief, Loss

About the Author

Carole Satyamurti (1939-2019) was a poet, translator and sociologist. For many years she taught at the Tavistock Clinic in London, where her main academic interest was in the relevance of psychoanalytic ideas to an understanding of the stories people tell about themselves. She co-edited Acquainted with the Night: psychoanalysis and the poetic imagination (2003). Her retrospective, Stitching the Dark: New & Selected Poems (2005) drew on five previous collections, two of which were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. Her translation, Mahabharata: A Modern Retelling (W.W. Norton, 2015), was joint winner of the inaugural Roehampton Poetry Prize.

Praise for this book

'...The Hopeful Hat is a masterclass in premonition and departure... She'll be remembered for big-hearted, socially responsible poems that are intent on change but reconciled to limitation. This is a moving book that feeds our yearning for hope, while also questioning the meaning of hopefulness.' - Kit Fan, The Guardian (Best recent poetry round-up)

"No matter how compelling her themes, with their demands of compassion and political conscience, Satyamurti never loses hold of her main topic: the capacity of language." -- Poetry London

'Carole Satyamurti's poems look to be stations on a road map of psychological discoveries, sometimes personal, sometimes objective and scientific. Her best poems are not so much confessions as meditations.' - Anne Stevenson, London Magazine

'Her unobtrusive approach is deceptive - these poems have unexpected stings in their tails.' - Penelope Shuttle

'... though shaded by mortality, it's not a sad book, rather the reverse, offering as it does its own very personal witness to the courage of the human spirit--a spirit encapsulated by the busker's 'hopeful hat' in the title poem.' - Stuart Henson, London Grip

'This posthumous collection is a work of impressive artistry and depth... what I find impressive isn't just the precision and economy with which these poems are written but the stance they take, the direction of their vision. Instead of asking us to look at her own situation, Satyamurti looks through it at other people's experiences and broader human meanings... Altogether, this is a book I'd warmly recommend and expect to enjoy over many years.' - Edmund Prestwich, The High Window

'The calm, wit and grace with which she writes makes reading her poems moving but never depressing.' - Kate Kellaway, The Observer (poetry book of the month)

'... Satyamurti's lyric meditations marry emotional clarity with imagery that lingers in the mind's eye.' - Ellora Sutton, Mslexia

'These poems are quiet, insistent, intimate. They're plain speaking. Her canvas ranges from the personal to the global... The book grows ever stiller and more beautiful, for this reader, as it progresses. There's something about choosing the right words, ones that will bear fruit and witness.' - Charlotte Gann, The Friday Poem