Little Anchors

Writings on family and belonging from an award-winning poet.

Lorraine Mariner’s slant humour and eye for the peculiarities of human interactions have won her comparisons to Stevie Smith, that distinctly English poetic sensibility. In Little Anchors, her third collection, Mariner looks below the surface of the ‘quintessential English family’, discovering hidden heritages and family secrets and a new understanding of what it means to belong.

She uncovers the Greek heritage that her late father had carefully concealed – like many migrants of his generation – reclaiming both his name and extended family as she travels to get to know them. Alongside is the story of a beloved Irish grandmother, whose institutional and migrant experiences intersect with the troubling ‘herstories’ of twentieth-century Irish culture.

A transatlantic love affair brings a new rhyme with her family’s migrations to the US, while London works its magic and draws these strands of identity together again. George Michael, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, Jane Eyre and the longueurs of lockdown also make appearances.

Lorraine Mariner’s absorbing new collection is about the little anchors that hold us to people and places and keep us from going adrift.