I’m sorry, I forgot to pack my ears – Jenny Hamlett
ISBN: 9781788648851
£9.99
In this exquisite, thoughtful and thought-provoking collection Jenny Hamlett takes us into an interior world that is too often invisible and misunderstood. Deeply grounded in the natural world, communicated with linguistic dexterity and in mages that are fresh and precise, Sorry, I Forgot to Pack my Ears moves across registers, moving between moments of justified anger, bewilderment and humour to create lasting impact. A mature, brave and insightful collection.
Jenny Hamlett is severely deaf and in these intensely moving poems she shares the loneliness of being ‘on the edge’ and the ‘house arrest of misunderstanding’, interspersed with lyrical poems full of the joy she finds in nature. Courageous, sometimes humorous and never sentimental these are beautifully crafted poems that will move you and stay with you long after you finish reading.
Jenna Plewes
Jenny Hamlett’s latest collection is a powerful and moving sequence about losing one’s hearing, but also with overtones of other emotions and occasional joys. Both lyrical and descriptive, these accomplished poems reflect the poet’s deep love of the natural world; she takes us through woods and moorland with a sure hand, and thereby into the heart and soul. She makes us feel her loss without self-pity, drawing the reader into her silence with masterly understatement, with the inevitable emphasis on sight and scent. There are even notes of optimism, such as rejoicing in a shower of rain as “just a melting away // of all unnecessary things” or seeing a blind girl and leaving us to make the unspoken comparison. These are beautiful poems, beautifully constructed and sequenced.
Barbara Cumbers
Author biography
Jenny Hamlett has an MA in creative writing and has two full length collections published by Indigo Dreams Publishing. She has also published two short children’s stories with the Longmans Group and two poetry pamphlets with Palores Press and The Frogmore Press.
After becoming too deaf to teach young children, she worked as a creative writing tutor with Link into Learning, and other agencies in Cornwall, supporting people with their basic skills and also those in recovery from mental ill-health and alcohol abuse. Along with three short- story writers, she was selected by Carn to Cove to read her poems around the villages.
Retired now, she lives on Dartmoor and loves walking. Many of her poems arise from landscapes and other aspects of the natural world. She belongs to Open University Poets and locally to Company of Poets.