Little Anchors

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A01=Lorraine Mariner
Author_Lorraine Mariner
Category=DCF
contemporary poetry
cultural identity
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
family heritage
family secrets
female poets
forthcoming
forward prize author
genealogy
greek heritage
irish grandmother
little anchors
london poets
migration history
poetry about belonging
transatlantic romance
twentieth century ireland

Product details

  • ISBN 9781037411717
  • Dimensions: 153 x 197mm
  • Publication Date: 24 Sep 2026
  • Publisher: Pan Macmillan
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Lorraine Mariner’s slant humour and eye for the peculiarities of human interactions have won her comparisons to Stevie Smith, that distinctly English poetic sensibility. In Little Anchors, her third collection, Mariner looks below the surface of the ‘quintessential English family’, discovering hidden heritages and family secrets and a new understanding of what it means to belong.

She uncovers the Greek heritage that her late father had carefully concealed – like many migrants of his generation – reclaiming both his name and extended family as she travels to get to know them. Alongside is the story of a beloved Irish grandmother, whose institutional and migrant experiences intersect with the troubling ‘herstories’ of twentieth-century Irish culture.

A transatlantic love affair brings a new rhyme with her family’s migrations to the US, while London works its magic and draws these strands of identity together again. George Michael, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, Jane Eyre and the longueurs of lockdown also make appearances.

Lorraine Mariner’s absorbing new collection is about the little anchors that hold us to people and places and keep us from going adrift.

Lorraine Mariner was born in 1974 and lives in London where she works at the Poetry Library, Southbank Centre. Her collection Furniture was published by Picador in 2009 and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Seamus Heaney Centre Poetry Prize.

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