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

The writer is only the second person to posthumously win the Costa award. To celebrate, we present a poem from her winning collection, Inside the Wave

Whatever the tribal allegiances at Tuesday’s Costa awards in London, the warmth was tangible when the book of the year gong went to Helen Dunmore, who died in June. Dunmore excelled over more than three decades in most of the categories in contention for the prize, but returned to her roots to claim it, not with her fine fiction for adults or children, but with her 12th and final poetry collection, Inside the Wave. The irony is that, if she were still alive, she would have been unlikely to win this avowedly populist prize.

Five of the eight poetry collections that have won it since the book of the year category was introduced in 1985, in what were then the Whitbreads, have been animated by illness or death: Douglas Dunn and Christopher Reid mourned the deaths of their wives, while Jo Shapcott circled around her cancer diagnosis. Ted Hughes died before taking the prize for the second time with Birthday Letters in 1999.