Helen Ivory


Helen Ivory is an English poet, artist, tutor, and editor.

Career

Ivory is a poet and visual artist. Her sixth Bloodaxe Books collection is Constructing a Witch, a Poetry Book Society Winter Recommendation.
In 2024 she was awarded a Cholmondeley Award. Co-judge Moniza Alvi says of her work: "Helen Ivory, a highly individualistic poet and visual artist, conjures a world that is both magical and sharply real."
Ivory edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears and teaches online for National Centre for Writing In 2020 she became a poet and has work translated into Ukrainian, Polish, Spanish, Croatian and Greek. In 2019, she was named as one of the EDP's 100 Most Inspiring Women.
Fool’s World, a collaborative Tarot with the artist Tom de Freston, won the 2016 Saboteur Best Collaborative Work award. A collection of collage/mixed-media poems entitled Hear What the Moon Told Me was published in 2016 by Knives Forks and Spoons Press.
In early 2019, SurVison published a chapbook of predominantly surrealist poems titled Maps of the Abandoned City. Reviewing it in London Grip magazine, Rosie Jackson noted "the rare skill Ivory has to make her surrealism float into a world where politics – particularly sexual politics – are still pertinent." ''The Square of the Clockmaker'' from this chapbook, was chosen as one of the Poems on the Underground in 2023.

Awards

In 1999, Ivory won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors.
In 2024 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors.

Personal life

Ivory was born in Luton but has lived in Norwich since 1990. She is married to the poet and photographer Martin Figura.

Works

Poetry collections

  • The Double Life of Clocks
  • The Dog in the Sky
  • The Breakfast Machine
  • Waiting for Bluebeard
  • Hear What the Moon Told Me
  • Maps of the Abandoned City
  • The Anatomical Venus
  • Wunderkammer: New and Selected Poems https://madhat-press.com/pages/helen-ivory
  • ''Constructing a Witch''

    Collaborations

  • Fool's World, with Tom de Freston

    As editor

  • In Their Own Words: Contemporary Poets on Their Poetry, co-edited with George Szirtes
  • "Ten Poems from Norfolk", co-edited with Martin Figura