Discover the Penguin books that shaped us

No Map Could Show Them

* A Poetry Book Society Recommendation 2016*

'When we climb alone
en cordée feminine,
we are magicians of the Alps –
we make the routes we follow
disappear
'

The poems of Helen Mort's second collection offer an unforgettable perspective on the heights we scale and the distances we run, the routes we follow and the paths we make for ourselves.

Here are odes to the women who dared to break new ground – from Miss Jemima Morrell, a young Victorian woman from Yorkshire who hiked the Swiss Peaks in her skirts and petticoats, to the modern British mountaineer Alison Hargreaves, who died descending from the summit of K2.

Distinctive and courageous, these are poems of passion and precipices, of edges and extremes. No Map Could Show Them confirms Helen Mort’s position as one of the finest young poets at work today.

A highly intelligent, yet very accessible collection and an interesting addition to the ongoing discussion of where our culture is with gender identity… There is something which feels very necessary about this collection and there are moments throughout where it feels like a worthy successor to The Feminine Gospels and The World’s Wife.

Huffington Post

About Helen Mort

Helen Mort has published three collections of poetry: Division Street (2013), winner of the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, No Map Could Show Them (2016) and The Illustrated Woman (2022). Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Forward, T. S. Eliot and Costa Prizes. She has written a novel, Black Car Burning (2019) and a short story collection, Exire (2019). Her creative non-fiction includes A Line Above The Sky (2022), winner of the Boardman Tasker Award, and Ethel (2024). She is a Professor in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and lives in Sheffield.
Details
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • ISBN: 9781473523777
  • Length: 96 pages
  • Price: £5.99
All editions