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Counting Backwards: Poems 1975-2017
Winner of the Costa Book of the Year for her final collection, Inside the Wave, Helen Dunmore was as spellbinding a storyteller in her poetry as in her prose. Many of her haunting narratives draw us into darkness, engaging our fears and hopes in poetry of rare luminosity, while all her poetry also casts a bright, revealing light on the living world, by land and sea, on love, longing and loss. Counting Backwards is a retrospective covering ten collections written over four decades, bringing together all the poems she included in her earlier selection, Out of the Blue (2001), with all those from her three later collections, Glad of These Times (2007), The Malarkey (2012) and Inside the Wave (2017), along with a number of additional poems from her earlier collections.
- GenresPoetry
416 pages, Paperback
Published February 21, 2019
2 people are currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
Helen Dunmore
116 books970 followersI was born in December 1952, in Yorkshire, the second of four children. My father was the eldest of twelve, and this extended family has no doubt had a strong influence on my life, as have my own children. In a large family you hear a great many stories. You also come to understand very early that stories hold quite different meanings for different listeners, and can be recast from many viewpoints.
Poetry was very important to me from childhood. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes and hymns and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Writing these down came a little later.
I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation taught English as a foreign language in Finland.
At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.
During this time I published several collections of poems, and wrote some of the short stories which were later collected in Love of Fat Men. I began to travel a great deal within the UK and around the world, for poetry tours and writing residences. This experience of working in many different countries and cultures has been very important to my work. I reviewed poetry for Stand and Poetry Review and later for The Observer, and subsequently reviewed fiction for The Observer, The Times and The Guardian. My critical work includes introductions to the poems of Emily Brontë, the short stories of D H Lawrence and F Scott Fitzgerald, a study of Virginia Woolf’s relationships with women and Introductions to the Folio Society's edition of Anna Karenina and to the new Penguin Classics edition of Tolstoy's My Confession.
During the 1980s and early 1990s I taught poetry and creative writing, tutored residential writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and took part in the Poetry Society's Writer in Schools scheme, as well as giving readings and workshops in schools, hospitals, prisons and every other kind of place where a poem could conceivably be welcome. I also taught at the University of Glamorgan, the University of Bristol's Continuing Education Department and for the Open College of the Arts.
In the late 1980s I began to publish short stories, and these were the beginning of a breakthrough into fiction. What I had learned of prose technique through the short story gave me the impetus to start writing novels. My first novel for children was Going to Egypt, published in 1992, and my first novel for adults was Zennor in Darkness, published in 1993, which won the McKitterick Prize. This was also my first researched novel, set in the First World War and dealing with the period when D H Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived in Zennor in Cornwall, and came under suspicion as German spies.
My third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and since then I have published a number of novels, short story collections and books for children. Full details of all these books are available on this website. The last of The Ingo Quartet, The Crossing of Ingo, was published in paperback in Spring 2009.
My seventh novel, The Siege (2001) was shortlisted both for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction. This was another researched novel, which grew from a lifelong love of Russian history, culture and literature. It is is set in Leningrad during the first year of the siege of the city by German forces, which lasted for 880 days from the fall of Mga on 30th August 1941. The Siege has been translated into Russian by Tatyana Averchina, and extracts have been broadcast on radio in St Petersburg. House of Orphans was published in 2006, and in 2008 Counting the Stars. Its central characters are the Roman poet Catullus, who lived during the last years of the Republic,
Poetry was very important to me from childhood. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes and hymns and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Writing these down came a little later.
I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation taught English as a foreign language in Finland.
At around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I also completed two novels; fortunately neither survives, and it was more than ten years before I wrote another novel.
During this time I published several collections of poems, and wrote some of the short stories which were later collected in Love of Fat Men. I began to travel a great deal within the UK and around the world, for poetry tours and writing residences. This experience of working in many different countries and cultures has been very important to my work. I reviewed poetry for Stand and Poetry Review and later for The Observer, and subsequently reviewed fiction for The Observer, The Times and The Guardian. My critical work includes introductions to the poems of Emily Brontë, the short stories of D H Lawrence and F Scott Fitzgerald, a study of Virginia Woolf’s relationships with women and Introductions to the Folio Society's edition of Anna Karenina and to the new Penguin Classics edition of Tolstoy's My Confession.
During the 1980s and early 1990s I taught poetry and creative writing, tutored residential writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and took part in the Poetry Society's Writer in Schools scheme, as well as giving readings and workshops in schools, hospitals, prisons and every other kind of place where a poem could conceivably be welcome. I also taught at the University of Glamorgan, the University of Bristol's Continuing Education Department and for the Open College of the Arts.
In the late 1980s I began to publish short stories, and these were the beginning of a breakthrough into fiction. What I had learned of prose technique through the short story gave me the impetus to start writing novels. My first novel for children was Going to Egypt, published in 1992, and my first novel for adults was Zennor in Darkness, published in 1993, which won the McKitterick Prize. This was also my first researched novel, set in the First World War and dealing with the period when D H Lawrence and his wife Frieda lived in Zennor in Cornwall, and came under suspicion as German spies.
My third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and since then I have published a number of novels, short story collections and books for children. Full details of all these books are available on this website. The last of The Ingo Quartet, The Crossing of Ingo, was published in paperback in Spring 2009.
My seventh novel, The Siege (2001) was shortlisted both for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction. This was another researched novel, which grew from a lifelong love of Russian history, culture and literature. It is is set in Leningrad during the first year of the siege of the city by German forces, which lasted for 880 days from the fall of Mga on 30th August 1941. The Siege has been translated into Russian by Tatyana Averchina, and extracts have been broadcast on radio in St Petersburg. House of Orphans was published in 2006, and in 2008 Counting the Stars. Its central characters are the Roman poet Catullus, who lived during the last years of the Republic,
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
November 5, 2025
Earlier this year, I thoroughly enjoyed Helen Dunmore’s final published work “Inside the Wave,” completed in her final days. It was wonderful stuff; but too short. I wanted more. Hence my selection of this much bigger collection, spanning over fifty years of her publishing life. It includes all of that final set, and then so much more, including a few prose pieces among the poems. And some of those prose entries are among the most stunning bits of writing I’ve encountered anywhere; for example, I believe I’ve re-read “Writ in Water” at least half a dozen times, loving it more each time. Helen Dunmore’s talent, insight and sheer heart were nothing short of astonishing!
The title conveys layers of meaning: the anesthetist’s routine; reminiscing over one’s life experiences; and the structure of this compendium, where each successive section reaches another step farther back over Helen Dunmore’s span of years writing.
It strikes me that Dunmore’s poetry became increasingly lucid over the years, her earlier pieces being sophisticated and profound, but less graceful than what she composed in her later years. All through the span of her career, there was always a kind of agility to her poetry, i.e. she had a tendency to shift focus within each poem, so that the message and mood she leaves us with at the conclusion of each poem is often startlingly different from the tone of the opening lines. This makes for challenging reading; one needs to pay close attention, be prepared to reconsider one’s expectations of each piece.
This poetry is so good that I feel compelled to limit my reading each day to no more than a dozen pages. It deserves to be savored, taking the time to marinate in her effortless prose, contemplate the thoughts and images she shares. Helen Dunmore was a woman I would love to have had an opportunity to meet.
There are so many treasures here that it’s impossible to do it justice in a short quote or two. Perhaps a few lines from ”Privacy of Rain” will do:
”I love the privacy of rain,
the way it makes things happen
on verandahs, under canopies
or in the shelter of trees
as a door slams and a girl runs out
into the black-wet leaves.”
Or the poignant final lines in “To my nine-year-old self”:
”I leave you in an ecstasy of concentration
slowly peeling a ripe scab from your knee
to taste it on your tongue.”
This is one of those exceptional books that one cannot possibly “finish” reading, or even begin to appreciate, within the few weeks of a library loan. I will have no choice but to buy my own copy.
The title conveys layers of meaning: the anesthetist’s routine; reminiscing over one’s life experiences; and the structure of this compendium, where each successive section reaches another step farther back over Helen Dunmore’s span of years writing.
It strikes me that Dunmore’s poetry became increasingly lucid over the years, her earlier pieces being sophisticated and profound, but less graceful than what she composed in her later years. All through the span of her career, there was always a kind of agility to her poetry, i.e. she had a tendency to shift focus within each poem, so that the message and mood she leaves us with at the conclusion of each poem is often startlingly different from the tone of the opening lines. This makes for challenging reading; one needs to pay close attention, be prepared to reconsider one’s expectations of each piece.
This poetry is so good that I feel compelled to limit my reading each day to no more than a dozen pages. It deserves to be savored, taking the time to marinate in her effortless prose, contemplate the thoughts and images she shares. Helen Dunmore was a woman I would love to have had an opportunity to meet.
There are so many treasures here that it’s impossible to do it justice in a short quote or two. Perhaps a few lines from ”Privacy of Rain” will do:
”I love the privacy of rain,
the way it makes things happen
on verandahs, under canopies
or in the shelter of trees
as a door slams and a girl runs out
into the black-wet leaves.”
Or the poignant final lines in “To my nine-year-old self”:
”I leave you in an ecstasy of concentration
slowly peeling a ripe scab from your knee
to taste it on your tongue.”
This is one of those exceptional books that one cannot possibly “finish” reading, or even begin to appreciate, within the few weeks of a library loan. I will have no choice but to buy my own copy.
December 29, 2020
I kept this as the grand (in the sense of large) finale to my year working my way through my prize of every Bloodaxe volume published in 2019. Did I save the best till last? Certainly the most well known, and the only substantial collection. The decision to work backwards rather than start with the earliest was an excellent one, Dunmore's own although there was a real sense of full circle with her poems about her final illness and impending death and then arriving at pregnancy, birth and early motherhood. A heavy volume has, obviously, heavier lifting to do than a slim volume, so this wasn't one of those which thumped me hard in the gut or the heart as some have, and there were some which got away from me, but I found much of it tremendously, powerfully likeable. What a legacy.
May 3, 2019
Kudos to Bloodaxe: this weighty retrospective is a fine tribute to a prolific writer whose work spanned several disciplines. The reverse chronology works well, demonstrating just how fully-formed her talent was from the outset, and allowing the volume to end with poems of motherhood rather than the austere, autumnal musings of her final collection ‘Inside the Wave’.
August 24, 2024
It’s taken me a while (over a year!) to get through this, yet I still remember the punch of the first collection in the book, Dunmore’s last, as if it was yesterday. Really great collection, and working backwards from her last works to her earliest works really well.
April 15, 2020
I can't review modern poetry books really, poetry is personal. Either a reader likes the poet's view of life, the universe and/or everything, or they don't.
I like Helen Dunmore's view.
I like Helen Dunmore's view.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews