Bøger af Karen Harrison

This book offers an important insight into the health and wellbeing of prison operational managers and governor grades working within prisons in the UK. The authors bring together expertise from psychology, health, law, and criminology, to present a unique multidisciplinary examination of health and wellbeing based on interviews with Prison Governors' Association members. Examining how the participants described their health and wellbeing at work and at home, the authors reveal dysfunctional culture, disenchantment and disengagement, the heavy weight of expectations and high levels of professional uncertainty relating to the future. It argues that more governor grade specific and arguably mandated support is needed. Recommendations from the book will contribute to improving health and wellbeing amongst the governor work force, feeding into positive outcomes in relation to staff retention and prison expansion challenges.

A mother's love is the most powerful emotion but decisions taken in the name of that love can be cruel and damaging. Three women, Ted's mother, his paternal and maternal grandmothers used this love to protect their children or so they thought but instead it did irreparable harm. From an early age Ted knew that the women in his life were all liars and manipulators and he vowed that as a man he would reverse that role. When he decided that he needed a wife, he didn't look for love but for a girl who would learn to know her place and be totally subservient to him. He found such a girl in Maud. Ted was a naturally talented pianist and received all the joy and solace he required from his music. The Great War for many was a devastating time, millions died and hundreds of thousands were injured but for Ted it was a gateway to his dreams, to be a professional pianist. When the War was won, one officer remembered the Private that could make you forget the horrors, even if only for a moment. So Ted became Edward Edwards the pianist, who crossed the Atlantic and could sell out Carnegie Hall, New York. But to get there the road was scattered with women that he used and abused and men who he abandoned when they were no longer useful to him. Would he ever discover what true love was?

Entropy as a concept describes the transformation or transition from a stable to an unstable state. It characterizes any thermodynamic system. This is the theme and structure of the forty-seven poems in the collection A Study in Entropy. Most represent accumulation or desire for extremity, followed by destruction, expiry as an almost sacred gesture, like that of the Danaids, at the end and the beginning always with the heavenly: God, the Universe, the angels, the transcendent. The main topics are death, pain, hope, faith, water. It is a journey through the Sacred Mountain called life (in the process of writing the book, between October 2016 and July 2021, the author visited eight countries around the world, from Iceland to Kenya) and incarnated deep in the heart. Karen Harrison's entropy, caused by external circumstances, by the chaos of everyday life, by spiritual and physical wounds, has its point of balance - survival, achieved at the expense of courage and commitment. The book contains an introduction by the Bulgarian poet Tsvetanka Elenkova.

It offers a holistic and contemporary account of the penal system in England and Wales.Helping students to understanding the ever-changing environment of penal policy and practice, this book not only provides a strong foundation in penal theory but also has a strong focus on actual practice.

There are three main branches in Karen Harrison's poetry - mythological interpretation, journeying and intimate experiences. These sometimes intertwine, sometimes stay parallel. And the crown is full of movement with falling leaves at the edge of summer (her primordial sorrow) and elegant trembling of language. The movement is often a pulse. Some poems maintain their distance, others crush you with their closeness. But this is not a feminine poetry of attraction and sentiment, anticipating and inducing, it is a traveller's poetry in which the poet floats free with her images and readers solely dependent on the river's currents. A confirmation of Heraclitus' 'Everything is one.' Where rivers are trees from above. This is Karen Harrison's first poetry collection in English, originally published in 2011 and now reprinted in 2018. Her second poetry collection, Night-Singing Bird, is also available from Small Stations Press.

There are three main threads in Karen Harrison's poetry, which intertwine: nature, God and her personal life. But they are not simply ontological, they belong to each other, they widen each other, they talk amongst themselves. In Harrison's nature, there is room for many birds, but the most important are those that sing at night (hence the title of the book), just as God made darkness His home. Her God is a long pilgrimage starting with an entire belonging, but also allowing for a critical mind: she will protest in front of the United Nations about Him, who permitted such diversity in faith, but accepts only true believers. In her intimate moments, she suffered a terrible illness, but this is not a reason for closing herself off; for Harrison, it is a source of communication. The soul of this poet is open towards the other. It is a poetry - and a life - of relation. In this way, she confirms that most Christian postulate: that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends. We hold in our hands a book of aesthetic poetry, a silent book that sounds more like messages than conversation. This is autobiographical poetry, but it has deeper roots in the Spirit, which Church Fathers describe as a fish swimming in the open sea, in God. "Like a fish in an aquarium, I am a thing of the Spirit," writes Harrison.

A teacher struggles with loneliness and grief after the tragic death of her husband; a social worker carries with him the scars of an emotionally abusive parent; a teenager suffers unspeakable torture at the hand of his evil father; parents struggle to cope with the loss of their only child. Their lives become entwined, and as the plot unfolds, each finds escape from their painful past and hope for the future. The author, a former teacher, foster parent, and woman of faith, has created a story about the redeeming power of faith and love. The words reach out from the page to grasp your heart and restore your belief that compassion born out of sorrow can lead to new beginnings.