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Shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize 2024
Drawing on powerful and universal themes, The Penny Dropping traces the journey of a relationship from first meeting to eventual break-up.
Distance and maturity give retrospective access to moments of revelation which went fatally unacknowledged or unheeded at the time and which now return with an insistence impossible to ignore. But if the penny drops years too late, these poems are their own implicit argument for the value of revisiting our pasts if only in order to acquire a fuller, more complete presence in the now.
Hovering over the collection is Eliot’s final question in The Waste Land: ‘Shall I at least set my lands in order?’ And as Helen Farish applies herself to the task, her unflinching yet compassionate voice has never been more in evidence. From the elation of the opening ‘Things We Loved’ to the acceptance and humour of ‘Of All My Losses’, much is at stake on every page.
'The Penny Dropping, Helen Farish’s verse-sequence about a love relationship, could be called a page-turner if it weren’t for the fact that every page is a lyric poem of such compulsion that it unfailingly and hauntingly detains the reader’s attention. As a whole, it has all the coherence of a novel; but there is so much more to this beautifully realised lyric collection of the kind that she is a recognised master of. It is a masterpiece in both forms to a very unusual degree.’ – Bernard O'Donoghue
'Helen Farish’s The Penny Dropping is an unflinching and gripping account of the arc and aftermath of a failed relationship. Taking its epigraph from The Waste Land, ‘Shall I at least set my lands in order?’, it is also a virtuosic interrogation of the relationship between lyric and narrative time. Rather than shaping 52 short poems into one long elegiac sequence, Farish keeps alive the immediacy of the vanished present by meticulous relocation of ‘you’ and ‘I’ in space and time. Beginning in Morocco in the 1980s (‘the air in Essaouira / glassine on the first day of spring; harira’) and ending with the relationship’s enduring prompts in the present (‘Pasta alla Gorgonzola; / every wedding I’ve ever been to…’), The Penny Dropping is the best love poem anyone has written in years.' – TS Eliot Prize 2024 Judges
‘Memory is fragile. As we cultivate and reinforce it, we create a myth which interacts with the details of daily life, transforming it into one huge shrine. The candour and courage of The Penny Dropping should not be underestimated. This is confessional poetry of the highest order.’ – John Field, TS Eliot Prize reviewer
‘I savoured Helen Farish’s tracing of the break-up over time of a loved relationship in The Penny Dropping. Each of the intimate, single-stanza poems acts as a window in this gripping, elegantly achieved, and ultimately very poignant book.’ – Moniza Alvi, The Poetry Society (Books of the Year)
‘In speaking to the ghost of love through the language of immediacy, Farish resurrects the past for a moment, then lets it go.’ – Sylvie Jane Lewis, TS Eliot Prize Young Critic, on The Penny Dropping
‘I’d strongly recommend Helen Farish’s wonderful new narrative-driven collection, The Penny Dropping. These often exquisitely lyrical poems are intimate and personal, tracing the course of a close relationship and holding your attention throughout.’ – Will Mackie, New & Recent Poetry from the North: Summer 2024
'This themed book reflects upon a past love affair, taking us from inception to end, and what comes next. There is regret, rueful anger, a sense of loss and longing, together with a genuine feeling of tender gratitude for having experienced so intense a relationship in all its moods. What is fascinating is that these poems show such energy and luminosity from emotions first felt over 30 years ago [...] A remarkable collection from an excellent poet.' – David Harmer, Orbis, on The Penny Dropping
‘The fifty-two lyric poems that comprise Farish’s fourth collection of poems showcase her virtuosity in this form. They chart the history of a relationship from first meeting to ultimate dissolution and painful aftermath. The narrator – and there is something almost novelistic about her recollections – looks back, in each poem, from the present, although Farish is at pains to impress on the reader how insecure a vantage point this is. […] a considerable, harrowing achievement.' – Phoebe Walker, The Times Literary Supplement, on The Penny Dropping
9 Things We Loved
10 In the Balance
11 Taste of Home
12 ‘The Eve of St Agnes’
13 Exposure
14 The Innocence of Pronouns
15 Mozart’s 233rd Birthday
16 Premonition
17 The Sirocco
18 Qui e Li
19 The Halcyon Days
20 Snow on the Road to Naoussa
21 Christ Has Risen! He Has Risen Indeed!
22 Day of Miracles
23 Filling Station, Crete
24 P
25 May Day
26 From the Album
27 Burning
28 Legacy
29 The Right Thing
30 Valentine’s Day
31 Flowers, Baguettes, Fromage, Wine
32 ‘Pretty Woman’
33 A Hundred Days
34 That Route
35 The Butcher’s Boy
36 The Candle Snuffer
37 The Penny Dropping
38 In Seville That Spring
39 Scapegoat
40 That Postcard You Sent from Crete
41 On Approval
42 My Exit
43 Thanking the Universe
45 Fairytale
46 The Waste Land
47 Original You
48 No Point Now
50 Triggers
51 Pasta alla Gorgonzola
52 The Shaman Says
53 How Brilliant Is That?
54 Anniversary
55 Red Circle
56 Hero
57 The Joke
58 Films We Saw at The Phoenix
59 Aftermath
60 Beauty Spot
62 Bringing Things Forward
63 That Selige Sehnsucht Feeling
64 Notes & Acknowledgements