Helen Ivory

An Anatomical Venus - which gives this book its title - was an eighteenth-century anatomical wax sculpture of an idealised woman, a heady mix of eroticism, death and biological verisimilitude. Venus could be opened up and pulled apart by all the men who studied her. She would give up her secrets the first time of asking. Helen Ivory's new collection The Anatomical Venus examines how women have been portrayed as `other'; as witches; as hysterics with wandering wombs and as beautiful corpses cast in wax, or on mortuary slabs in TV box sets. A hanged woman addresses the author of the Malleus Maleficarum, a woman diagnosed with `Housewife Psychosis' recounts her dreams to Freud, and a sex robot has the ear of her keeper. The Anatomical Venus imagines the lives of women sketched in asylum notes and pictures others shut inside cabinets of curiosity.

The Anatomical Venus

The Dog in the Sky offers a view of the world that is skewed, vibrant and larger than life. Here, words turn into tiger-moths or laughing birds, the Minotaur finds his Ariadne and Pinochio's sister cuts loose from her strings. The Dog in the Sky is drunk on life, on love, on air thick with peach light, but also shows the flipside where you can't trust the earth beneath your feet. In her second collection, Helen Ivory takes you further into a world of illusions and transformations. Here are voices lost inside mental illness, divided and diverting selves, as well as sinister figures who control their madness and make things happen. She creates puppet shows in which larger-than-life forces pull the strings and write the scripts, drawing also from the darkly dramatic world of fairytale and myth.

The Dog in the Sky

George Szirtes

In Their Own Words is a celebration of the variousness of contemporary poets living and writing in the UK today. 56 poets talk about their own poetic voices and their work. Essential reading for anybody who cares about poetry.A backstage peek behind the poetry of some of the best contemporary UK writers. Edited by T.S. Eliot prize winner George Szirtes and Helen Ivory — two of the UK’s most respected poets and teachers.In Their Own Words is an examination of the voices writing in the UK today – the book addresses multiculturalism, page and stage, and LBG issues, as well as traditional ‘page’ poetry.This book is not retrospective, it is a representation of the poetry world as a living, breathing developing thing.Readers will get an insight into the many ways the poetic voice can develop – it’s a behind the scenes look at the poetics of the poetry.There is nothing currently available quite like it.

Contemporary Poets on Their Poetry

In Their Own Words

'The Double Life of Clocks' is the first collection of poetry written by Helen Ivory.

Helen Ivory

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