The Illustrated Woman

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2022 FORWARD PRIZE FOR BEST COLLECTION*

‘A raw, tender, potent collection’ – JESSICA ANDREWS

‘Gorgeous poems – profound, exploratory, wild, playful – and completely now’ – RUTH PADEL
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The brilliant new collection from T.S. Eliot Prize and Costa Award shortlisted poet Helen Mort

Let me kneel
before the sky and let me be humble, untidy,
let me be decorated.

Here are women’s bodies. Hungry adolescent bodies, fluctuating pregnant bodies, ailing aging bodies. Here are bodies as products to be digitized and consumed. Here is the body in nature, changing and growing stronger. Here are tattooed women through history, ink unfurling across their skin.

The Illustrated Woman is a tender and incisive collection about what it means to live in a female body – from the joys and struggles of new motherhood to the trauma of deepfakes. Amidst the landscapes of the Peak District and the glaciers of Greenland, Helen Mort’s remarkable poems transfix the reader in a celebration of beauty and resilience.

‘These are poems that will leave their indelible mark’ – ANDREW MCMILLAN