Dunmore was known as a novelist and poet but this, her final collection of poems, was the first I had read. It was by my bedside for many months. She faced death from cancer and explored the path towards it, caught inside the wave of living and dying. I was moved by her words and the simple beauty of her language. In the final poem, death gathers her up like a mother would a small child. I hope it was like that.
(Helen Dunmore died in June 2017.)
(Christine Miller - bwl 93 Summer 2019 ) |
