Description
In Helen Seymour’s fantastic debut collection, the poems fizz with controlled anger, satire, and surreal examples of how we navigate a society that constantly dehumanises disabled people […]. Seymour utilises the surreal and satire to face up to such injustices and there is much arresting imagery; “I’m sucking in the air of a bouncy castle / breathing in the bumps.” Not only is this an impressive debut, it is an impressive and urgent collection, full stop. – Peter Raynard, Everybody’s Reviewing (read the full review here)
Seymour opens up the poem and invites us in to empathise with her narrators and characters, and to see ourselves in them too. There is something utterly compelling about this — it suggests so many ways in which we are all stuck in versions of ourselves that we are once trying to escape from and can also hide away in. – Emma Simon, The Friday Poem (read the full review)
Every single doctor and nurse should see this show – NHS Doctor on To Helen Back
Helen Seymour is a disabled writer and performer. She won gold in the Creative Futures Literary Awards (2017), was longlisted for the Outspoken Poetry Prize (2018), and was shortlisted for the Jerwood Poetry Fellowship (2019). She is published in The Emma Press Anthology of Illness (2020) and is frequently commissioned by such organisations as Apples and Snakes and DadaFest. Helen has written and performed two spoken word theatre shows, directed by Hannah Silva: To Helen Back toured nationally, exploring sickness, health and what it really means to recover; Helen Highwater focused on dating, disability and intrusive thoughts and premiered as part of London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre in 2019.
