Home » Towards a General Theory of Love
Product Image

Towards a General Theory of Love

Clare Shaw
€17.50
Quantity:
In stock with our UK publisher. 14-28 days
Delivery/Collection within 10-20 working days
14 days return policy Shipping & Delivery
10-20
A01=Clare Shaw
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Clare Shaw
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DCF
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
Harry Harlow
Language_English
love
monkeys
PA=Available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
psychology
softlaunch
trauma

Product details

  • ISBN 9781780376042
  • Dimensions: 138 x 216mm
  • Publication Date: 26 May 2022
  • Publisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
  • Language: English
Secure checkout Fast Shipping Easy returns
Description
Clare Shaw’s fourth collection Towards a General Theory of Love shows that poetry can say as much as about who we are – and especially how we feel – as psychology. They also feed each other. Harry Harlow’s famous experiments on baby monkeys changed the course of psychology. They proved that we need care, contact and love – and they inflicted profound and lasting suffering on their subjects. Clare Shaw’s poems in Towards a General Theory of Love are driven by the same furious need to understand the experience of love and its absence. Harlow’s findings, attachment theory, mythology and art are set alongside stories of attraction, grief and desire. The book is inhabited by the character of Monkey, who shows by example how early attachments and trauma may shape us, but how ultimately the individual – like the reader – will come to realise her, his or their own general theory and practice of love.
About Clare Shaw

Clare Shaw was born in Burnley in 1972. Their first two collections with Bloodaxe were Straight Ahead (2006), which attracted a Forward Prize Highly Commended for Best Single Poem, and Head On (2012), which according to the Times Literary Supplement is 'fierce, memorable and visceral'. Their later collections are Flood (2018), a New Writing North Read Regional title in 2019, and Towards a General Theory of Love (2022) which won a Northern Writers' Award and was a Poetry Society Book of the Year. 

Their poetry is widely anthologised – including 100 Queer Poems (Penguin Random House, 2022) and the National Trust’s Nature Poems (2023). It is also set to music, illustrated and staged, and has featured multiple times on Radio 4’s Poetry Please and Radio 3’s The Verb. In 2021, Clare wrote the libretto for the community opera Daylighting, which premièred at the Royal Academy of Music and was shortlisted for an Ivor Novello Award for Community and Engagement. They have also written for theatre and radio, and as a mental health educator and trainer, they have published numerous resources in the field of mental health. Clare lives on the hills above Hebden Bridge and in 2022, co-wrote and presented Radio Four’s Weathering the Storm which explored the relationship between art, resilience and the landscape of the Calder Valley. 

A passionate advocate for accessibility in poetry, and for poetry as a tool of personal and social change, Clare has founded or directed numerous poetry initiatives including the Kendal Poetry Festival, Wonky Animals, the Lost Things Project and more. They have held poetry residences in numerous settings, including festivals, conferences, hospitals, factories, landfill sites and bogs; and they collaborate with artists and academics in other disciplines, including photography, folk music, film, conservation and design. Clare lectures at the University of Huddersfield and is a regular tutor for Wordsworth Grasmere, The Royal Literary Fund and The Arvon Foundation. Variously described as 'electrifying' and as 'one of the best readers on the scene', Clare performs across the UK and beyond. 

More from this author