British - Poet | December 12, 1952 - June 5, 2017
If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.
Helen Dunmore
PastUnderstandMoreUsHappening
To try to expunge an individual's history is a terrible violation.
HistoryTryIndividualTerrible
It is a violation which has obsessed the tyrants of the twentieth century. They do not want simply to kill their opponents, but to liquidate them, to deny that they have ever existed.
WantTyrantsCenturySimplyObsessed
Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.
WordsPoetryWritingLearnYouHead
Writing children's books gives a writer a very strong sense of narrative drive.
ChildrenWritingDriveStrongSense
When you are young you don't always realise how full of doubts everybody is.
YouYoungAlwaysDoubtsEverybody
Those who try to obliterate the past are injuring the present.
PastPresentTryWhoThoseInjuring
The poets whom I knew then were all men and all seemed dauntingly sure of themselves - although I am sure that really they were as uncertain as I was.
MenI AmSureUncertainWhomKnew
The language has got to be fully alive - I can't bear dull, flaccid writing myself and I don't see why any reader should put up with it.
MyselfWritingLanguageAliveWhy
Poets go through a very tough apprenticeship in the use of words.
WordsToughGoThroughPoetsVery
My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.
NewFirstBooksCollectionImprint
Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book.
HopeDoorBookFaceDeepLandscape
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