Book Launch: The Song of the Whole Wide World

Tamarin Norwood will discuss the process of writing The Song of the Whole Wide World, her new memoir interpreting the brief life of her baby son, written partly during pregnancy and partly during the silent maternity leave that followed. She will consider the ethical and poetic considerations of expanding fragmentary details into a meaningful life narrative, and explore parallels between the roles of poetry, myth, science and fiction in the creation of meaning. The question of how to address gaps in biographical evidence is critical to life-writing, but especially urgent when the subject of a biography has no voice at all. Her memoir—selected as an Editor's Choice in the Bookseller and as a favourite non-fiction slim volume by Pandora Sykes, with features in the Sunday Times Style and The Guardian—was completed while Tamarin convened the OCLW weekly writing sessions through lockdown, and she will close with some practical remarks on finding a writing community.

Dr Tamarin Norwood is a writer and academic with a background in fine art. She has written on drawing, metaphor, memorial and grief, and has an interest in ritual and rural history. Her academic research addresses the ad hoc beliefs that emerge in response to bereavement, with a focus on reproductive loss. Tamarin is a visiting fellow at the University of Bath Centre for Death and Society, a Leverhulme ECR fellow at Loughborough University, and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford Centre for Life-Writing.