'Towards a General Theory of Love is the fourth collection by Clare Shaw, a much-cherished poet who won a Northern Writers' Award in 2018. Her searching and magnetic poems hold a clarity of thought as they explore multiple emotional states and perspectives.' - Will Mackie, New Writing North

'If the title of Clare Shaw's fine collection is a pastiche of a subject that resists theorizing, then the hugely comprehensive nature of her immersion overturns any suggestion of parody. For here is love examined from every conceivable angle, incorporating every degree of pain and suffering, and viewed from the variegated perspective of alter-egos both animate and inanimate. The effort of will is exacting but not destabilizing: serving the greater purpose of epiphany, the poems are strengthened by their openness, their brave acknowledgment of an unsettling past.' - Steve Whitaker, The Yorkshire Times

'There's a freshness in her expression, like waking anew to the language... touches of humour, and consolations of the natural world... help to punctuate the emotional intensity.' - Charlotte Gann, The Friday Poem

'... this volume unfolds as a personal reflection on love that is rich and varied, raw and vulnerable, tender and honest. What is titled as being toward a general theory emerges much more so as a personal and evolving theory that is so real and human that we may then also see and find ourselves in it.' - Brian E. Levitt, Person-Centered & Experiential Psychotherapies

'An authentic, strong and searingly honest voice comes through this fourth collection of poems from Clare Shaw, published by Bloodaxe Books. In Towards a General Theory of Love, Shaw explores love from a range of different perspectives, imbued with melancholy, pain, suffering, and hope.' - Jane Broadis, The School Librarian

'Clare Shaw's fourth collection is an exploration of how grief, as the 'negative image of love', colours and changes every aspect of the world... Shaw's particular genius for simile, titles and list-poems are also evident here. The poet's distinctive northern voice resonates through assured rhythm, exquisite rhyme when needed, and the music of lament especially in elegies and memories about their mother.' - Pauline Rowe, Orbis

'As the title suggests, this is a book of love poems, but more an exploration of aspects of love; familial, romantic and how Clare Shaw feels about herself... An early piece is entitled "This is a very small poem", but there are no small poems in this amazingly real and open study of love.' - Simon Williams, Expert Reviews (Best poetry books you can buy in 2022)

'As with their previous collections with Bloodaxe, Straight ahead (2006), Head on (2012) and Flood (2018), their fourth collection is unwaveringly direct and often painfully raw and honest; but more than this, it is also beautifully written, with such a palpable sense of community, interconnectedness, humanity and shared experience, that one comes away from reading it feeling emotionally richer and in no way diminished.' - Charlotte Burton, Journal of Child Psychotherapy

'The collection reaches well beyond the bounds of its 58 component parts, feeling by turns like a play, therapy, friend. Indefinable, then, but no matter - it is a triumph.' - Dawn Gorman, Writing in Education

'Clare Shaw's Towards a General Theory of Love is a large-hearted and unflinching exploration both of love and the desolation felt at its lack or loss. Exquisitely crafted, these poems inhabit a range of forms, each as fitting and natural to their theme as skin is to flesh.' - Kathryn Bevis, Poetry News (Christmas Reading, 2022)

'Clare Shaw's Towards a General Theory of Love was a standout for me. Beautiful, deceptively simple poems of huge weight and power. I love them for their wit and for the deep underlying emotion. Wonderful book.' - Carole Bromley (Poetry Society Books of the Year 2022)

'Clare Shaw's speaker in Towards a General Theory of Love is fittingly eccentric and various. There is rage, playfulness, despair and yearning in this quest for an understanding of our need for attachment at all costs... Throughout these poems, the speaker - never the spokesperson - shows a light touch with dark material. They resist any temptation to instruct, and the lessons learned are all the more valuable for it.' - Lydia Kennaway, Stand

'As so often in Shaw's poetry, wild landscapes offer their own compassion and comfort... But this collection also represents a deeply embodied interpretation of love, in its involvement of the whole human person.' - Hannah Stone, The Lake

'Towards a General Theory of Love inhabits an aqueous space, rocked by grief, anxiety, and despair, but also the promise of tenderness and love. Survival is not enough; poetry offers healing [...] Towards a General Theory of Love are poems to read and reread, to think about, and read again. They are a gift of love and grief, both of which are lakes that we 'will walk by forever'.' - Joanna Bourke