Inside the Wave

**Winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2017 Winner of the 2017 [Costa Book Awards](https://www.waterstones.com/category/cultural-highlights/book-awards/the-costa-book-awards) Poetry Award

To be alive is to be inside the wave, always travelling until it breaks and is gone.

'We all felt this is a modern classic; a fantastic collection, life affirming and uplifting. The poems carry powerful messages that speak to all of us.' - *Wendy Holden, Chair of the final Costa Book Awards judges* These poems are concerned with the borderline between the living and the dead - the underworld and the human living world - and the exquisitely intense being of both.

They possess a spare, eloquent lyricism as they explore the bliss and anguish of the voyage.

*Inside the Wave* was Helen Dunmore's final collection, following *The Malarkey* (2012), whose title poem won the National Poetry Competition.

Her other books include *Glad of These Times* (2007), and *Out of the Blue: Poems 1975-2001* (2001), a comprehensive selection drawing on seven previous collections.

Her final poem, 'Hold out your arms', was written shortly before her death and not included in the first edition of *Inside the Wave;* this revised edition includes that work.

[Helen Dunmore](https://www.waterstones.com/author/helen-dunmore/12599)’s pen must have barely rested after her first novel, [*Zennor in Darknes*s](https://www.waterstones.com/book/zennor-in-darkness/helen-dunmore/9780141033600), was published in 1993. An extraordinarily prolific writer, she won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction for her second novel *[A Spell of Winter](https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-spell-of-winter/helen-dunmore/9780141033587)* and her other bestselling fiction included the novels *[The Siege](https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-siege/helen-dunmore/9780241952191)*, *[The Betrayal](https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-betrayal/helen-dunmore/9780141046839)* and *[Exposure](https://www.waterstones.com/book/exposure/helen-dunmore/9780099559290)*. *Birdcage Walk* was her last novel. Dunmore also wrote books for children and YA readers, including the novels that form the [Ingo Chronicles](https://www.waterstones.com/book/ingo/helen-dunmore/9780007464104). She was also an award-winning poet and her final collection, written in the months leading up to her death, *[Inside the Wave](https://www.waterstones.com/book/inside-the-wave/helen-dunmore/9781780373584)*, is both a meditation on mortality and a celebration of life in all its strange and wonderful richness.