In 2013 poet Sarah Hesketh spent 20 weeks visiting a residential care home for people with dementia. The result is The Hard Word Box, a book of poems and verbatim interviews that takes the reader on a surprising and enriching journey through memory and imagination. The agility of Hesketh's poetic voice channels moments of tenderness, suffering and humour, revealing dementia as a negotiation with language and silence.The Hard Word Box is an inventive and compassionate meditation on the things that will be lost.
‘Encompassing the election of Trump, the Brexit vote, and the deaths of Jo Cox, David Bowie and Carrie Fisher – as well as the death of Hesketh’s own father - 2016 subtly builds into a moving study of grief, and the solace to be found in other people.’ – Clare Pollard