Towards a General Theory of Love
Published on 26. May 2022
Book
Paperback/Softback
80 pages
978-1-78037-604-2 (ISBN)
Description
Clare Shaw's fourth collection Towards a General Theory of Love shows that poetry can say as much as about who we are - and especially how we feel - as psychology. They also feed each other.
Harry Harlow's famous experiments on baby monkeys changed the course of psychology. They proved that we need care, contact and love - and they inflicted profound and lasting suffering on their subjects. Clare Shaw's poems in Towards a General Theory of Love are driven by the same furious need to understand the experience of love and its absence. Harlow's findings, attachment theory, mythology and art are set alongside stories of attraction, grief and desire. The book is inhabited by the character of Monkey, who shows by example how early attachments and trauma may shape us, but how ultimately the individual - like the reader - will come to realise her, his or their own general theory and practice of love.
Harry Harlow's famous experiments on baby monkeys changed the course of psychology. They proved that we need care, contact and love - and they inflicted profound and lasting suffering on their subjects. Clare Shaw's poems in Towards a General Theory of Love are driven by the same furious need to understand the experience of love and its absence. Harlow's findings, attachment theory, mythology and art are set alongside stories of attraction, grief and desire. The book is inhabited by the character of Monkey, who shows by example how early attachments and trauma may shape us, but how ultimately the individual - like the reader - will come to realise her, his or their own general theory and practice of love.
Reviews / Votes
There is a quiet, cool, authentic voice to the poems of Flood. A flood that destroyed Clare Shaw's home town, mental illness, self-injury, the end of a relationship, are all experiences recounted with factual detachment... There is a sense that the poet's most intimate surroundings have betrayed her, but the stillness and control with which Shaw writes reveal quiet layers of intensity drawn from unstable places. -- Carla-Rosa Manfredino * Times Literary Supplement, on Flood * Caught directly in the deluge's rising tide, Shaw is a witness who gives incantatory evidence of poetry's power to define, rather than simply describe, the existential pain of being caught helpless in maelstroms both external and psychological. -- Steve Whitaker * The Yorkshire Times, on Flood * Hold your breath when you read Clare Shaw's poems. Startling, searing, scorching, this is an emotional blast of a book. -- Jackie Kay * on Straight Ahead *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 5 mm
Weight
116 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-604-2 (9781780376042)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Clare Shaw
Towards a General Theory of Love
E-Book
05/2022
Bloodaxe Books
€13.49
Available for download
Person
Clare Shaw was born in Burnley in 1972. Their first two collections with Bloodaxe were Straight Ahead (2006), which 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'. Their later collections are Flood (2018), a New Writing North Read Regional title in 2019, and Towards a General Theory of Love (2022) which won a Northern Writers' Award and was a Poetry Society Book of the Year.
Their poetry is widely anthologised - including 100 Queer Poems (Penguin Random House, 2022) and the National Trust's Nature Poems (2023). It is also set to music, illustrated and staged, and has featured multiple times on Radio 4's Poetry Please and Radio 3's The Verb. In 2021, Clare wrote the libretto for the community opera Daylighting, which premiered at the Royal Academy of Music and was shortlisted for an Ivor Novello Award for Community and Engagement. They have also written for theatre and radio, and as a mental health educator and trainer, they have published numerous resources in the field of mental health. Clare lives on the hills above Hebden Bridge and in 2022, co-wrote and presented Radio Four's Weathering the Storm which explored the relationship between art, resilience and the landscape of the Calder Valley.
A passionate advocate for accessibility in poetry, and for poetry as a tool of personal and social change, Clare has founded or directed numerous poetry initiatives including the Kendal Poetry Festival, Wonky Animals, the Lost Things Project and more. They have held poetry residences in numerous settings, including festivals, conferences, hospitals, factories, landfill sites and bogs; and they collaborate with artists and academics in other disciplines, including photography, folk music, film, conservation and design. Clare lectures at the University of Huddersfield and is a regular tutor for Wordsworth Grasmere, The Royal Literary Fund and The Arvon Foundation. Variously described as 'electrifying' and as 'one of the best readers on the scene', Clare performs across the UK and beyond.
Their poetry is widely anthologised - including 100 Queer Poems (Penguin Random House, 2022) and the National Trust's Nature Poems (2023). It is also set to music, illustrated and staged, and has featured multiple times on Radio 4's Poetry Please and Radio 3's The Verb. In 2021, Clare wrote the libretto for the community opera Daylighting, which premiered at the Royal Academy of Music and was shortlisted for an Ivor Novello Award for Community and Engagement. They have also written for theatre and radio, and as a mental health educator and trainer, they have published numerous resources in the field of mental health. Clare lives on the hills above Hebden Bridge and in 2022, co-wrote and presented Radio Four's Weathering the Storm which explored the relationship between art, resilience and the landscape of the Calder Valley.
A passionate advocate for accessibility in poetry, and for poetry as a tool of personal and social change, Clare has founded or directed numerous poetry initiatives including the Kendal Poetry Festival, Wonky Animals, the Lost Things Project and more. They have held poetry residences in numerous settings, including festivals, conferences, hospitals, factories, landfill sites and bogs; and they collaborate with artists and academics in other disciplines, including photography, folk music, film, conservation and design. Clare lectures at the University of Huddersfield and is a regular tutor for Wordsworth Grasmere, The Royal Literary Fund and The Arvon Foundation. Variously described as 'electrifying' and as 'one of the best readers on the scene', Clare performs across the UK and beyond.
Content
9 What the Frog Taught Me About Love
10 Letter to My Mother
11 Elegy for My Grandma
13 abcedarian
14 The Night Your Mother Died
15 This is a very small poem
17 An Empirical Examination of the Stage Theory of Grief.
18 Morecambe Bay as Grief
20 Monkey Writes a Poem About His Mother
21 Rhosymedre: Prelude on a Welsh Hymn
22 The Day Thou Gavest
23 Lesbian Conception in the Euston Hilton
24 Midwife, Calderdale General Hospital
26 Nocturne for My Daughter
28 This Is About My Mother
29 Child Protection Policy
30 A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation
31 Monkey and I Discuss the Dif?culty of Working Therapeutically with Non-verbal Traumatic Memories
33 My Bedroom
34 An account of my reading from six to sixteen years old.
35 I Ask Monkey How He Sleeps.
36 The Impact of Neglect on the Developing Brain
37 Why Did the Monkey Cross the Road?
38 Monkey Talks About Self Injury
39 Monkey Writes a Story About God
40 Monkey Joins a Dating App
41 Self Portrait as Monkey Getting Drunk
42 When I look at her
43 Monkey Teaches Me Map-reading Skills
44 What the Gold?sh Taught Me about Love
45 Self-portrait as Hermaphroditus entering the water
46 Night Swimming, Derwentwater
48 Love as an Adder in Grizedale
49 Love as DIY
50 My Girlfriend Did Not Believe in Ghosts
51 Love as a Poem
52 The Titanic Re?ects on the Recent Ending of a Long-term Relationship
53 Self-portrait as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
54 I come from Kergulen
55 Love as a SatNav
56 Love as a Global Pandemic
57 What the Moon Taught Me About Love
58 Total Social Isolation in Monkeys
59 Love at the William Thompson Recreation Centre
60 Lorry Driver
61 The Garden of Earthly Delights
62 Everything Is a Gift
64 You couldn't make it up
65 Information for Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Rape
67 Other than Personality Disorder, what term could you use to describe these people?
68 Self-portrait as Hermaphroditus coming out of the water
69 Monkey Invites Me to Imagine
70 Chronicles of Narnia
71 If Love is Snow
72 Things I ?nd attractive in a person
73 Instructions for Care
74 Day after a Migraine
75 Monkey Reads William Blake
79 Acknowledgements
10 Letter to My Mother
11 Elegy for My Grandma
13 abcedarian
14 The Night Your Mother Died
15 This is a very small poem
17 An Empirical Examination of the Stage Theory of Grief.
18 Morecambe Bay as Grief
20 Monkey Writes a Poem About His Mother
21 Rhosymedre: Prelude on a Welsh Hymn
22 The Day Thou Gavest
23 Lesbian Conception in the Euston Hilton
24 Midwife, Calderdale General Hospital
26 Nocturne for My Daughter
28 This Is About My Mother
29 Child Protection Policy
30 A Psychological Study of the Strange Situation
31 Monkey and I Discuss the Dif?culty of Working Therapeutically with Non-verbal Traumatic Memories
33 My Bedroom
34 An account of my reading from six to sixteen years old.
35 I Ask Monkey How He Sleeps.
36 The Impact of Neglect on the Developing Brain
37 Why Did the Monkey Cross the Road?
38 Monkey Talks About Self Injury
39 Monkey Writes a Story About God
40 Monkey Joins a Dating App
41 Self Portrait as Monkey Getting Drunk
42 When I look at her
43 Monkey Teaches Me Map-reading Skills
44 What the Gold?sh Taught Me about Love
45 Self-portrait as Hermaphroditus entering the water
46 Night Swimming, Derwentwater
48 Love as an Adder in Grizedale
49 Love as DIY
50 My Girlfriend Did Not Believe in Ghosts
51 Love as a Poem
52 The Titanic Re?ects on the Recent Ending of a Long-term Relationship
53 Self-portrait as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore
54 I come from Kergulen
55 Love as a SatNav
56 Love as a Global Pandemic
57 What the Moon Taught Me About Love
58 Total Social Isolation in Monkeys
59 Love at the William Thompson Recreation Centre
60 Lorry Driver
61 The Garden of Earthly Delights
62 Everything Is a Gift
64 You couldn't make it up
65 Information for Survivors of Sexual Abuse and Rape
67 Other than Personality Disorder, what term could you use to describe these people?
68 Self-portrait as Hermaphroditus coming out of the water
69 Monkey Invites Me to Imagine
70 Chronicles of Narnia
71 If Love is Snow
72 Things I ?nd attractive in a person
73 Instructions for Care
74 Day after a Migraine
75 Monkey Reads William Blake
79 Acknowledgements