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Book Review: The Song of the Whole Wide World: On Grief, Motherhood and Poetry By Tamarin Norwood

Dr Alys Einion
Senior Lecturer, University of Dundee, and Editor-in-Chief, The Practising Midwife

by | May 1, 2024 | Book reviews

Book Review: The Song of the Whole Wide World: On Grief, Motherhood and Poetry By Tamarin Norwood

Review by: Dr Alys Einion – Senior Lecturer, University of Dundee, and Editor-in-Chief, The Practising Midwife
Published by Indigo Press
Publication date: 2022
Format: pbk
RRP: £9.99
ISBN: 978-1911648734

tsotwww high res‘It was a lonely ocean…’

It took me some time to complete reading this small volume, but I am glad I did. This book powerfully, and with great dignity and profound beauty, captures the experience of perinatal loss in ways I cannot begin to describe. Written as a memoir, the text is poetic and intensely emotional, describing in great depth a pregnancy in which diagnosis of a condition incompatible with life becomes a life journey for a mother, father and brother.

Tamarin Norwood is frank, honest and uncompromising in her evocation of the vast array of emotions, thoughts and experiences involved, but using language that soothes and gentles the reader into this great storm, making it appear calm and completely navigable. Detailing the time from diagnosis, through birth and death and what comes after, she guides the reader through what grief can feel like, offering in her very words, a chance to make meaning from the unfathomable. For midwives and professionals, the role and behaviours of our peers is made explicit, and the deeply personal, familial nature of birth and death is emphasised.

A must read for anyone seeking to understand more about caring for families experiencing perinatal loss. TPM

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