Polly Atkin
Polly Atkin is a multi-award-winning writer, essayist and poet based in Grasmere, Cumbria, where she has worked and researched at Dove Cottage, home of the Wordsworths. Her first poetry collection,ย Basic Nest Architectureย (Seren: 2017), won a Northern Wrtierโs Award and was followed by a third pamphlet,ย With Invisible Rainย (New Walk: 2018). Her first pamphlet,ย bone songย (Aussteiger, 2008), was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Pamphlet Award, 2009, and second,ย Shadow Dispatchesย (Seren, 2013), won the Mslexia Pamphlet Prize, 2012.ย Recovering Dorothy,ย a biography of Dorothy Wordsworth, was published by Saraband in 2021.
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Dorothy Wordsworth is well known as the author of the Alfoxden and Grasmere Journals (1798โ1803) and as the sister of the poet William Wordsworth. She is widely praised for her nature writing and is often remembered as a woman of great physical vitality. Less well known, however, is that Dorothy became seriously ill in 1829 and was mostly housebound for the last twenty years of her life. Her personal letters and unpublished journals from this time paint a portrait of a compassionate and creative woman who made her sickroom into a garden for herself and her pet robin and who finally grew to call herself a poet. They also reveal how vital Dorothy was to her brotherโs success, and the closeness they shared as siblings. By re-examining her life through the perspective of her illness,ย this biography allows Dorothy Wordsworth to step out from herย brotherโs shadow and back into her own life story.
Prizes and awards
LONGLISTED Barbellion Prize 2022
REVIEWS OF Recovering Dorothy
โThe Wordsworths provide โฆ a treasure trove for authors, but this unusual book about Dorothy Wordsworth โฆ is all about her illness. Iโve never seen that subject covered before.โ Hunter Davies, Cumbria Life
โDorothy Wordsworthโs life is not worth less when, as Atkin reveals through scholarship and poetry, her โkeen eyeโ is โturned not just on the world around her, but on the world inside.โโ Iona Glen
โPolly Atkin argues for Dorothyโs place in the writing of illness โฆ A narrowing world, she reminds us, need not lead to a narrowing of the self.โ Guardian
โA timely reappraisal โฆtold with great sensitivity and โฆ a grounded perspective of Dorothyโs everyday life in the Lakeland landscape.โ Cumbria Life, Book of the Month
โA fresh, often deeply affecting reappraisal โฆ breaks new ground โฆ The restraint and spareness of Atkinโs writing is extremely powerful โฆ almost leap[ing] off the page.โ European Romantic Review
