Inside the Wave

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. Inside the Wave won the 2017 Costa Poetry Award and went on to be named Costa Book of the Year. 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, she published all her poetry with Bloodaxe. Her earlier work was collected in Out of the Blue: Poems 1975-2001 (2001), which was followed by Glad of These Times (2007), The Malarkey (2012), and Inside the Wave (2017), her tenth and final collection. A new retrospective, Counting Backwards: Poems 1975-2017, 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 posthumous story collection, Girl, Balancing and Other Stories, followed from 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.

We all felt this is a modern classic; a fantastic collection, life-affirming and uplifting. The poems carry powerful messages that speak to all of us.

• 11 Counting Backwards 12 The Underworld 13 Shutting the Gate 14 In Praise of the Piano 15 Re-opening the old mines 16 Inside the Wave 18 Odysseus to Elpenor 20 Plane tree outside Ward 78 21 The shaft 22 Leave the door open 23 My life's stem was cut 24 The Bare Leg 26 The Place of Ordinary Souls 27 My daughter as Penelope 29 The Lamplighter 30 The Halt 31 Bluebell Hollows 32 A Loose Curl 33 Festival of stone 34 A Bit of Love 35 Winter Balcony with Dunnocks 36 Mimosa 37 Nightfall in the IKEA Kitchen 39 The Duration 41 At the Spit 42 Terra Incognita 43 Four cormorants, one swan 44 Girl in the Blue Pool 45 February 12th 1994 46 What shall I do for my sister in the day she shall be spoken for? 47 In Secret 48 All the breaths of your life 49 Her children look for her 50 Cliffs of Fall 51 Five Versions from Catullus 51 1 Through Babel of Nations 52 2 Undone 53 3 Sirmio 54 4 Dedication 55 5 Sparrow 56 Rim 57 On looking through the handle of a cup 58 Ten Books 60 Subtraction 61 My people 62 September Rain 69 Hold out your arms