Winning for her final poetry collection, written in the last weeks of her life, Dunmore is only the second posthumous winner in the literary prize’s history

The poet and author Helen Dunmore, who died in June 2017, has been awarded the Costa book of the year for her final poetry collection, Inside the Wave.

Helen Dunmore obituary Read more

Dunmore, who died last year aged 64, is only the second posthumous winner of the book of the year category in the prize’s history, after her fellow poet Ted Hughes won for Birthday Letters in 1998, and only the eighth poetry collection to take the top award.

Inside the Wave considers her terminal cancer diagnosis and impending death. After her death, the collection was updated to include the poem Hold Out Your Arms, written just 10 days before she died. In it she imagines death as a mother: “You push back my hair / – Which could do with a comb / But never mind – / You murmur / ‘We’re nearly there.’” In its review of Inside the Wave, the Guardian praised Dunmore as having “offered the reader a chance to share her remarkable alertness, imaginative range and generosity of spirit”.

Dunmore’s husband, Frank Charnley, and their children, Patrick and Tess, took to the stage to receive the award at the ceremony in London on Tuesday night.

“Poetry was in Mum’s soul,” Patrick Charnley told the audience, thanking her poetry editor, Neil Astley, in particular. “This collection contains some of the most beautiful writing she completed in her life and it came at the time of her death. It is so personal and so wonderful, we hope it will touch a lot people who face this thing that we all do.”



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Patrick, Tess and Frank Charnley, family of the late British poet and author Helen Dunmore at the 2018 Costa book awards. Photograph: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP/Getty Images

Speaking to the Guardian afterwards, Charnley said: “The whole family is delighted – and a bit shocked. It is very emotional.



“For Mum to win the overall prize is staggering. We’re so thrilled. But there is a lot of sadness that she is not here. But she would have been really over the moon, particularly because it was her poetry ... She’d have been so pleased to know that her win would bring new people to poetry.”



Expressly rewarding enjoyability, the Costa book awards are open only to writers in the UK and Ireland. There are five categories – novel, first novel, biography, poetry and children’s book – with the winner of each vying for the overall £30,000 book of the year prize.

The chair of the judges, Wendy Holden, called Inside the Wave “a modern classic” and praised it for its “very strong message”.

“Even though it was written while she was dying, it was very life affirming,” she said. “Even people who didn’t normally read poetry thought it was a fantastic collection. It is incredibly moving, and by an author at the top of her game.

“Some of the poems are written from her hospital bed, but even those are very uplifting. They don’t need to be upbeat and jolly. Most of them have a lot to say about how we live, who she was, who we are ... they speak to all of us. It is impossible to read it and not get something from it. It is great to give a collection of poetry this great prize.”

Holden said the decision to award Dunmore the prize was close, but not unanimous. “Everyone was happy,” she said of the 90-minute judging meeting. “No one was storming out, saying ‘over my dead body, this is a disaster’”.

‘My life’s stem was cut’ – a final poem by Helen Dunmore Read more

Dunmore’s win may help put poetry back in the public eye, “particularly as poetry is at a very interesting place at the moment, as it is very hotly debated what poetry is now, whether it is slam poetry or, in inverted commas, highbrow,” she said, referring to a recent fallout over an essay in poetry journal PN Review that criticised the work of “young, female poets” as “amateur”.

Winner of the first Orange prize for women’s fiction with her novel A Spell of Winter, Dunmore was critically acclaimed for her 12 novels and 10 poetry collections. One of the bestselling authors of 2017, Dunmore’s last novel, Birdcage Walk, was published three months before her death. A further collection of unpublished short stories, titled Girl, Balancing, will be published in June 2018.

Inside the Wave was up against the Man Booker-longlisted novel Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor; In the Days of Rain by author and academic Rebecca Stott, a memoir about her life in a Christian fundamentalist separatist cult; Katherine Rundell’s children’s book The Explorer; and Gail Honeyman’s debut novel, Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. After winning the first novel category, the Scottish author was the consistent favourite to win, with the book, about a survivor of a childhood trauma, set to be adapted for film by actor Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine.

Holden was joined in the judging by authors and category judges Moniza Alvi, Simon Garfield, Freya North, Sophie Raworth and Piers Torday, as well as British Vogue contributing editor Laura Bailey, author and presenter Fern Britton and actor Art Malik.

Each of the shortlisted authors wins £5,000. The awards are open only to authors living in the UK and Ireland. This year, 620 entries were whittled down to the five, four-book shortlists.