Launched through New Walk Editions -18th November 2021
I'm so excited that my pamphlet, Holding On, has been published by New Walk Editions (November 2021). It explores the challenges of living as a woman, and as a girl, in an often hostile world, and ways in which such challenges may be endured or overcome. The poems are personal but also connect with other women's lives.
The restrained and acutely observed poems in Holding On take the reader inside the lives of the damaged but defiant: her female protagonists bear the scars of their struggles and insist on their right to self-determination. Whether dancing partnerless in a 1970s disco in Swindon, straining against the restrictions of bourgeois marriage, or coping with mental illness, these girls and women are often ‘alone, but not lonely’, finding inner freedom in a world that otherwise hems them in. These poems offer fleeting and uncanny glimpses into the existences of others, but it is Rimmer’s ability to combine empathy and melancholy that gives this work its unmistakable and compelling atmosphere.
DAVID CLARKE
Holding On is placed firmly in the here and now through sharp observation and fresh language. The poems reach back through decades of women’s lives: the poet’s and other women’s, such as Eleanor Farjeon and Melanie Klein, drawing lines of kinship and connection. A number of the poems are rooted in childhood but there is no hint of nostalgia or sentimentality, just a clear-eyed
understanding of how it is to live with a rich inner life and difficulty in negotiating the outer life. I suspect many poetry readers will feel, as I did, that satisfying inner nod of recognition at ‘I was drab as a moth, invisible’, as ‘Something Opening’ concludes, ‘waiting to court the grass with kisses, / to drink rain, to be // on the other side of everything.’
ANGELA FRANCE
Review on Sphinx from Mat Riches.
Signed copies can be obtained from me using the link below.
paypal.me/belindarimmer
Cost is £5.00 including p&p. Please add your address as a note to the PayPal screen.
Being Swedish in Pontlottyn
for Maria Evans
Word goes around: Maria's friend is Swedish.
Boys in stripy tops line up
across the dance floor curious
to know if my life is all sex and cigarettes.
They tie themselves in knots
to get close to me. I make space
between my lips to let out the nonsense
of pretend Swedish. I tell them of forests,
herds of moose, the way to smoke a herring.
The boys wrap me in their heat,
their beery breath, their rugby thighs.
They hang on to my every word.
Later, on the train home,
when I ask for a single to Gloucester, please,
there's a dead feeling on my tongue.
Cover image: Lisa Kokin, Snip, Snip, mixed media book collage with found photo, 2006 www.lisakokin.com
The restrained and acutely observed poems in Holding On take the reader inside the lives of the damaged but defiant: her female protagonists bear the scars of their struggles and insist on their right to self-determination. Whether dancing partnerless in a 1970s disco in Swindon, straining against the restrictions of bourgeois marriage, or coping with mental illness, these girls and women are often ‘alone, but not lonely’, finding inner freedom in a world that otherwise hems them in. These poems offer fleeting and uncanny glimpses into the existences of others, but it is Rimmer’s ability to combine empathy and melancholy that gives this work its unmistakable and compelling atmosphere.
DAVID CLARKE
Holding On is placed firmly in the here and now through sharp observation and fresh language. The poems reach back through decades of women’s lives: the poet’s and other women’s, such as Eleanor Farjeon and Melanie Klein, drawing lines of kinship and connection. A number of the poems are rooted in childhood but there is no hint of nostalgia or sentimentality, just a clear-eyed
understanding of how it is to live with a rich inner life and difficulty in negotiating the outer life. I suspect many poetry readers will feel, as I did, that satisfying inner nod of recognition at ‘I was drab as a moth, invisible’, as ‘Something Opening’ concludes, ‘waiting to court the grass with kisses, / to drink rain, to be // on the other side of everything.’
ANGELA FRANCE
Review on Sphinx from Mat Riches.
Signed copies can be obtained from me using the link below.
paypal.me/belindarimmer
Cost is £5.00 including p&p. Please add your address as a note to the PayPal screen.
Being Swedish in Pontlottyn
for Maria Evans
Word goes around: Maria's friend is Swedish.
Boys in stripy tops line up
across the dance floor curious
to know if my life is all sex and cigarettes.
They tie themselves in knots
to get close to me. I make space
between my lips to let out the nonsense
of pretend Swedish. I tell them of forests,
herds of moose, the way to smoke a herring.
The boys wrap me in their heat,
their beery breath, their rugby thighs.
They hang on to my every word.
Later, on the train home,
when I ask for a single to Gloucester, please,
there's a dead feeling on my tongue.
Cover image: Lisa Kokin, Snip, Snip, mixed media book collage with found photo, 2006 www.lisakokin.com