There he stands, blind on slivovitz 194
There is a gargoyle look when the mouth caves 55
There we sat in the clattering dark 32
There’s a stone set in the car-park wall 172
These blackberries belong to the devil 152
These second marriages arching within 416
Thetis 376
They are building houses 140
They are hiding away in the desert 245
They are the sun’s fingerprints on grey pebbles 131
They fly / straight-necked and barely white 276
They make him a plaster saint of poetry 83
They rode the ridge those five minutes 156
This evening clouds darken the street quickly 407
This is Jacob’s drum 168
This is the wardrobe mistress, touching 266
This is what I want 262
This path is silky with dust 248
Those shady girls 287
Those words like oil, loose in the world 188
Three Ways of Recovering a Body 234
Three workmen with blue pails 300
Through Babel of Nations 59
Tiger lookout 222
Tiger Moth caterpillar 223
Time by Accurist 264
To Betty, swimming 313
To cross the field on a sunset of spider-webs 126
To my nine-year-old self 152
To Virgil 233
Today in a horse landscape 375
Today is barred with darkness of winter 409
Tonight I’m eating the past 371
Tonight there’s a crowd in my head 214
Tulip 141
Two miles or so beyond 258
Two of us on the tired pavement 193
Two spines curve in 223
Uncle Will’s telegram 378
Under the leaves 206
Undone 59
Untroubled, the anaesthetist 19
Up at the park once more 419
US 1st Division Airborne Ranger at rest in Honduras 342
Viking cat in the dark 218
Violets 134
Virgin with Two Cardigans 172
Visible and Invisible 94
Waist-deep in snow and wading 153
Waiting. I’m here waiting 237
Walking at all angles 167
Wall is the book 150
Washed silk jacket by Mesa 264
We are men, not beasts 230
We are the grown-ups, they the children 136
We stop somewhere on the plain 38
We’re strung out on the plain’s upthrust 312
Weaning 403
Weary and longing to go home 117
What I get I bring home to you 325
What shall I do for my sister in the day she shall be spoken for? 54
What Will You Say 114
What you have done to me has undone me 59
When I should be working 82
When I was four at the feet 90
When my grandmother died my father eulogised her 166
When you grow tired of the flame 220
When You’ve Got 268
Where have you been, my little daughter 279
Where have you gone 395
Where the great ship sank I am 256
Whichever way I turned on the radio 317
Whooper swans 276
Why did you tell them to be quiet 75
Why is the mimosa here 45
Wild strawberries 325
Window Cleaners at Ladysmith Road 118
Winter 1955 312
Winter Balcony with Dunnocks 44
Winter bonfire 158
Winter fairs 420
With his hands he teaches wind to move 221
With short, harsh breaths 196
Without remission 189
Writ in Water 83
Years back and full of echoes 52
Yellow butterflies 131
Yes, but were we happy then? 41
Yes, we believed that the oceans were endless 145
Yesterday my stepson came home with school photographs 398
You always thought that you’d die mid-stride 66
You came back to life in its sweetness 242
You could use his wing as a fan 143
You must forgive me. Don’t look so surprised 152
You never wanted the taste 113
You put your hand over mine and whispered 291
You’re breast-up in the bubbling spaces you make for yourself 313
Your dry voice from the centre of the bed 303
Zelda 391
About the Author
Helen Dunmore (1952-2017) was a poet, novelist, short story and children’s writer. Her poetry books received a Poetry Book Society Choice and Recommendations, the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award, and the Signal Poetry Award. Bestiary was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 1997. She won first prize in the Cardiff International Poetry Competition in 1990 with her poem ‘Sisters leaving the dance’, and first prize in the National Poetry Competition in 2010 with ‘The Malarkey’.
After making her debut with The Apple Fall in 1983, Helen Dunmore published all her poetry with Bloodaxe Books, completing her tenth and final collection, Inside the Wave, shortly before her death in 2017. Inside the Wave won the 2017 Costa Poetry Award, and went on to be named as Costa Book of the Year, only the second posthumous award in the history of the Costa/Whitbread Book of the Year. Counting Backwards: Poems 1975-2017, a retrospective edition drawing on all her collections, was published by Bloodaxe in 2019.
She published twelve novels and three books of short stories with Penguin, including A Spell of Winter (1995), winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, Talking to the Dead (1996), The Siege (2001), Mourning Ruby (2003), House of Orphans (2006) and The Betrayal (2010), as well as The Greatcoat (2012) with Hammer, and The Lie (2014) Exposure (2016) and Birdcage Walk (2017) with Hutchinson. A final short story collection, Girl, Balancing, was published by Hutchinson in 2018.
Born in Beverley, Yorkshire, she studied English at York University, and after graduating in 1973 spent two years teaching in Finland before settling in Bristol.
Copyright
Copyright © Literary Estate of Helen Dunmore 2019
First published 2019 by
Bloodaxe Books Ltd,
Eastburn,
South Park,
Hexham,
Northumberland NE46 1BS.
This ebook first published in 2019
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The right of Helen Dunmore to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
ISBN: 978 1 78037 446 8 ebook.