The Illustrated Woman

(Image: Joe Horner)

Shortlisted for the 2022 Forward Prize for Best Collection

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.

You can buy the book here.

'These are poems that will leave their indelible mark' - ANDREW MCMILLAN

The Illustrated Woman bristles with colour and truth. Helen Mort renders the body in desire, shame, love and pain across landscapes to create a dazzling portrait of our own skin as something that belongs only to usJessica Andrews, author of SALTWATER

Marvellous and tender poems... beautifully achieved... Mort's poems shine with bright risk throughoutKate Kellaway, Observer, *Poetry Book of the Month*