Books by Polly Atkin

The first book to focus on Dorothy Wordsworths later life and work and the impact of her disability allowing her to step out from her brothers shadow and back into her own life story.Dorothy Wordsworth is well known as the author of the Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals (17981803) and as the sister of the English Romantic poet William Wordsworth. She is widely praised for her nature writing and is often remembered as a woman of great physical vitality. Less well known, however, is that Dorothy became seriously ill in 1829 and was mostly housebound for the last twenty years of her life.Her personal letters and unpublished journals from this time paint a portrait of a compassionate and creative woman who made her sickroom into a garden for herself and her pet robin and who finally grew to call herself a poet. They also reveal how vital Dorothy was to her brothers success, and the closeness they shared as siblings.By re-examining her life through the perspective of her illness, this biography allows Dorothy Wordsworth to step out from her brothers shadow and back into her own life story.

In Much With Body, Polly Atkin displays her gifts as a vibrant and provocative contemporary nature poet. The dramatic landscapes of the Lake District and the diaries of Dorothy Wordsworth give rise to these poems. A life-long negotiation with a set of chronic health conditions, brings urgency to her warning we can't expect nature to save us.

Offers a collection of poems and images published to mark the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. This title features poems that are based on the theme of enslavement.