An extraordinary memoir
of anticipatory grief,
seventy-two minutes of life
and a silent maternity leave
‘A heartbreakingly brave, candid
and lyrical memoir of baby loss.’
Leah Hazard
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‘A work of great and subtle beauty.
It expanded my understanding of life, death and what it means to be a mother.’
Cathy Rentzenbrink
The Song of the Whole Wide World
A few months into pregnancy, Tamarin Norwood learned that the baby she was carrying would not live. Over the sleepless weeks that followed, Tamarin, her husband and their three-year-old son tried to navigate the unfamiliar waters of anticipatory sorrow and to prepare for what was to come.
Written partly during pregnancy and partly during the silent maternity leave that followed, The Song of the Whole Wide World is an emergency response to grief held somewhere between the womb, the grave and the many stories that bind them: stories drawn from medical science, poetry, liturgy, vivid waking dreams of underwater life, and knowledge held deep within the body.
This profoundly moving and intimate account offers a lyrical and fearless meditation on birth, death, and the possibilities of consolation.
Available from February 2024
Praise
‘A piercingly beautiful book of rare emotional precision, which urges us all to love bravely. This book changed me. I couldn’t put it down.’
— Anna Beecher, author of Here Comes the Miracle
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'I’ve never read a book like The Song of the Whole Wide World. It’s a thrilling act of imagination about mothering that illuminates the body and its metaphysical matters. Tamarin Norwood’s writing shows a respect towards her son so pure that I felt both humbled and proud to witness it. I’m still reeling from the piercing pain and joy of this book. Unforgettable.’
— Gwyneth Lewis MBE, Inaugural National Poet of Wales
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‘What an incredible book. I don’t think I have ever read anything so delicate – every placement of every word is perfect.’
— Lucy Easthope, author of When the Dust Settles: Searching for Hope after Disaster and The Recovery Myth: The Plans and Situated Realities of Post-Disaster Response
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‘A work of great and subtle beauty. It expanded my understanding of life, death and what it means to be a mother.’
— Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love: The Story of My Brother and His Sister
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‘A heartbreakingly brave, candid and lyrical memoir of baby loss.’
— Leah Hazard, author of Womb: The Inside Story of Where We All Began and Hard Pushed: A Midwife’s Story
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‘This book took my breath away. It’s a journey of love and loss and I’m grateful for Tamarin’s gift to write and articulate so tenderly what many bereaved parents cannot.’
— Nicola Welsh, CEO of Held In Our Hearts, a charity providing baby loss counselling
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‘The Song of the Whole Wide World shimmers. Tamarin Norwood’s poetic writing is gut-wrenching and gorgeous, all at the same time. It is a story for anyone grappling with the forces of gravity of life and death, of medical decisions, and surrendering to waves of love.’
— Amy Kuebelbeck, author of A Gift of Time: Continuing Your Pregnancy When Your Baby’s Life Is Expected to Be Brief
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‘The Song of the Whole Wide World is a tender and poetic account of unimaginable grief.’
— Alice Kinsella, author of Milk: On Motherhood and Madness
‘Visceral and meticulous, Norwood’s account is an astonishing and unflinching act of remembrance and love.’
— Carys Bray, author of When the Lights Go Out and The Museum of You
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About the Author
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.
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The Song the the Whole Wide World is Tamarin’s second book. Her drawing memoir The Mourning Lines was published in 2021 by Ma Bibliothèque. She is now working on her next book, an exploration of early childhood, its ways of understanding knowledge, wonder and threat, and their entwinement with maternal and ecological time.
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As an academic, Tamarin is working with national baby loss charities Held in Our Hearts, Sands, and Antenatal Results and Choices, to learn from parents about the meanings and rituals they invent in reproductive loss when cultural narratives fail to serve them. This work, which is funded by the Leverhulme Trust, builds on a collaboration with Held In Our Hearts creating therapeutic writing resources and workshops for parents bereaved at birth, and on her essay Something Good Enough, which won the Lancet Wakley Essay Prize in 2021. For this work, in 2023 she won the Vice-Chancellor's Award for impactful research and innovation at Loughborough University where she is a research fellow. She is also a visiting fellow at the University of Bath, and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford.
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Tamarin lives with her family in Northamptonshire.
Author photo (c) Lorentz Gullachsen 2023
Enquiries
For press and media enquiries, please email Sophie Portas: sophieportaspr@gmail.com
For other enquiries, please email Anna Webber: awebber@unitedagents.co.uk