{"product_id":"how-to-begin-1634","title":"How to Begin","description":"\u003cp\u003e'Enchanting, illuminating and tender' - Nigel Slater‘I believe you can live in a book of poems’A book about finding a creative voice and becoming an artist via a startling rediscovery in Edmund de Waal’s family archives – letters between his grandmother and the charismatic poet Rainer Maria Rilke** With letters translated from the German by prizewinning translator, Karen Leeder **This is a story about how to begin.In 1921, Elisabeth Ephrussi writes a letter to the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke. She too is a poet, or an aspiring one – a young law student in Vienna just beginning her creative life. To her surprise, Rilke writes back with advice. A five-year correspondence follows, an exchange of lyrical and exhortatory letters alongside books, translations, poems in manuscript. They never meet.Fifty years later, Elisabeth’s grandson, Edmund de Waal, wants to be a poet and a potter. He sends her his own poetry, and she responds with guidance and Rilke’s Duino Elegies.How to Begin follows Edmund’s journey as an artist. This is a book about failure, about starting again, about apprenticeship and asking for and then disregarding advice, about working out ways to keep going when you don’t know how.It is a moving, intergenerational story about the traces of memory within a family, and a deeply personal reflection on how we learn resilience with the support of others. It is for any reader starting out, seeking the permission to begin.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Edmund De Waal","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67616670613564,"sku":"9781784746704","price":10395.0,"currency_code":"PKR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0714\/7706\/7836\/files\/9781784746704.jpg?v=1790944908","url":"https:\/\/libertybooksstore.myshopify.com\/products\/how-to-begin-1634","provider":"LibertyBooksStore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}