The Illustrated Woman

Marvellous and tender poems... beautifully achieved... Mort's poems shine with bright risk throughout

Kate Kellaway, Observer, *Poetry Book of the Month*

A wonderful, endlessly re-readable work

Financial Times, *Books of the Year*

The Illustrated Woman celebrates the female body... Her deft poetry mesmerises as it troubles

Daljit Nagra, New Statesman, Books of the Year 2022

The title sequence is a complex, cohesive and at times dazzling analysis of another kind of writing - that inscribed directly on the poet's skin

Times Literary Supplement

The Illustrated Woman bristles with colour and truth. Helen Mort renders the body in desire, shame, love and pain across landscapes to create a dazzling portrait of our own skin as something that belongs only to us

Jessica Andrews, author of SALTWATER

Helen Mort's expert control of the line offers us footpaths through the landscape of the body, showing us all the ways we might mark, redeem, protect or fear for both our own and the bodies of others.

Andrew McMillan, author of PHYSICAL

Wildly impressive in its ability to balance its subjects with a questing intelligence without losing a human core

Rishi Dastidar

Wide-ranging and insightful... These poems are by turns delicate and diamond-hard, with a real flair for a knockout closing line

Dave Coates, Poetry Book Society Autumn 2022 Bulletin

A triumphal collection, that closes with a ritual cleansing and celebration of the naked body, as it should be celebrated... They can be challenging, unsettling poems for a man to read, but that's what makes them such essential reading - these are poems designed to get under your skin, where they belong

John Glenday, author of THE GOLDEN MEAN