Keep Moving
Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- £2.99
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
'Keep Moving speaks to you like an encouraging friend reminding you that you can feel and survive deep loss, sink into life's deep beauty and constantly make yourself new' Glennon Doyle, bestselling author of Untamed
'Candid, lyrical and full of empathy, this is a book that feels vital and welcome in these times - for those who are struggling, or anyone just seeking joy' Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations
'Maggie Smith writes so honestly without being brutal and she shows readers hope while avoiding the saccharine. To experience relief from am book is rare and wonderful thing. Keep Moving gave me that relief' Bella Mackie, author of Jog On
'I'm so grateful for the clarity, compassion, and wit in these pages. This is a book that will change you, a book you will want to give to someone you love. I've never read anything quite like it' Lucy Kalanithi, Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, Stanford University, and widow of Paul Kalanithi, author of When Breath Becomes Air
To help navigate her way through a difficult divorce, the poet Maggie Smith started sharing her daily 'notes to self' on social media and soon found that her thoughts resonated with people going through a host of life changes. In this deeply moving book of thoughts, quotes and personal essays, Maggie Smith writes about new beginnings as opportunities for transformation.
Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending broken ceramics with gold, Keep Moving celebrates the beauty and strength on the other side of loss. This is a book for anyone who has gone through a difficult time and is wondering: What comes next?
'I read this book in one sitting during one of the most difficult weeks of my life . . . Every single page of this book made me breathe a little deeper and feel a little less alone' Amanda Palmer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Smith (Good Bones) reflects on loss, beauty, and transformation in a thoughtful but not entirely satisfying collection. The slight volume compiles inspirational tweets all concluding with the admonition to "keep moving" that Smith began writing in the wake of a divorce. The messages are loosely organized into three parts ("Revision," "Resilience," and "Transformation") and interspersed with short personal essays. When read individually, the bite-size sentiments succeed as wise and compassionate pieces of encouragement. But bound together in book format, they blur together and fail to leave much of an impression. The bland, minimalist design doesn't do the work any favors, either. Meanwhile, the essays, which carry on the same themes, but add details of Smith's own experiences, are uneven. While some rely on tired metaphors of transformation (fire, chrysalises), others have striking and memorable imagery that showcases Smith's eye as a poet: "like when you pull your hand out of a bucket of water, and the water takes back the space." Smith's reflections on her struggles with miscarriage and postpartum depression are especially affecting. Readers will wish her obvious talents had been used in a way that does them justice.
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