Charlotte Newman - Counter Reform

Do you count the number of adjectives you use, and the number of syllables in the words? Do you put things down only with your left hand or step with your right foot forward so that the left is always last? Counter Reform is a glimpse into the world of obsessive compulsive disorder, how it shapes every corner of your conscious mind, from the intellect to your social or anti-social life and sexuality. It is rarely tidy but often darkly funny, absurd, mathematical and something that needs to be resisted at every opportunity. This is an exercise in that resistance.

Charlotte Newman was born in Surrey in 1986. She was educated at Selwyn
College, Cambridge and Birkbeck, University of London. She won the inaugural
Sabotage Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet in 2013 and was featured in The Salt Book of Younger Poets in 2011. She was highly commended in the Forward Prizes 2017 and was featured in the Forward Book of Poetry 2018. Her literary criticism has appeared in The Observer, The New Statesman, Poetry Review, Poetry London and The Dark Horse, among others; she was shortlisted for The Scotsman’s Allen Wright Award for theatre criticism. Charlotte works in public affairs and PR. She is the author of Selected Poems (Annexe, 2012) and Trammel (Penned in the Margins, 2016).