The Clinic, Memory: New and Selected Poems

Recipient of the Poetry Book Society Special Commendation 2017 Elaine Feinstein’s poems are the harvest of a lifetime in literature. This selection, made by the author herself, gathers work from over half a century of published writing, and is completed by a section of new poems. The selection ranges from early poems of feminist rebellion and tender observation of children to elegies for the poet’s father and close friends, reflections on middle-age, the conflicts in a long marriage, and meditations on the lot of refugees. In new poems Feinstein records her treatment for cancer, her feelings of dread in the clinic and unexpected moments of ‘extravagant happiness’. The exploration of memory is at once a source of ironic amusement and an acknowledgement of human transience.

About the Author :
Elaine Feinstein was a poet, novelist, and biographer. She received many prizes, including a Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, Society of Authors', Wingate and Arts Council Awards, and an Honorary D.Litt from the University of Leicester. She travelled across the world to read her poems, and her books have been translated into most European languages; also Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Her versions of the poems of Marina Tsvetaeva, a New York Times Book of the Year, have remained in print since 1971. She was given a major grant from the Arts Council to write her novel, The Russian Jerusalem, a phantasmagoric mix of prose and poetry (Carcanet, 2008). Her collection Cities came out in 2010, Portraits in 2015 and her new and selected poems, The Clinic, Memory, in 2017. She served on the Council of the Royal Society of Literature, of which she was a Fellow, as a judge for many literary awards, and as a Chair of the Judges for the T.S.Eliot Award. She received a Civil List Pension in 2010. She died in September 2019. Elaine Feinstein has a page on the Poetry Archive website, where you can listen to recordings of her reading from her work, and access other useful resources. Click here.

Review :
'Here we have a life, a person in the world opened up with intelligence and tact.' Martina Evans, The Irish Times 'Written with a disarming honesty and directness, an unflinchingly wide-awake clarity. Difficult things - from the death of a husband to insomnia - have seldom seemed quite so beguilingly common to us all.' The Tablet 'One gets a strong sense of the shape of Feinstein's life and her preoccupations throughout this excellent collection. One can't sum up the poetic achievements of a long career in a short review and I won't try; far better for you to just read the book.' Poetry Salzburg 'Elaine Feinstein's truthfulness, her linguistic clarity and her musicality - above all, the last, for my pleasure - make her poetry a joy to read. The Clinic, Memory, her new and selected, is rich with poems that stay in one's mind.' Leah Fritz, Acumen 'There is a wry acceptance of illness, of ageing, change and loss, tethered to a valuing of the richness and rewards of the rocky road that have led to now...It is one of the strengths of Feinstein's work that she does not flinch from engaging with raw emotion and the contradictions entangled with intimacy.' Jenni Calder, JQ 'She was a unique poet-storyteller whose memories live on with visceral clarity in this collection.' Bryan Cheyette, Times Higher Education