Counting Backwards: Poems 1975-2017 by Helen Dunmore Jenna Clake There is an enjoyably vicious

There is an enjoyably vicious satire of the anodyne non-promises of a conservative party speech

leaves fall and a traffic warden is rudely interrupted

The real one's much more gory

tender and funny: he tells it how it is

in the literal sense – these are poems we can feel

Counting Backwards: Poems 1975-2017 by Helen Dunmore Jenna Clake There is an enjoyably viciousWinner 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