Books by Helen Ivory

Taking its title from an 18th-century anatomical wax sculpture of an idealised woman, Ivory's fifth collection examines how women have been portrayed as 'other'; as witches; as hysterics with wandering wombs; and as beautiful corpses cast in wax, or on mortuary slabs in TV box sets.

The dream-like, myth-inspired poems of Helen Ivory's fourth collection from Bloodaxe portray the part-remembered, part-imagined childhood of the girl who grows up to be a woman living in Bluebeard's house.

The Breakfast Machine is driven by the transformations of fairytale where the dark corners of childhood are explored and found to be alive and well. There is more than a hint of East European darkness in Helen Ivory's third collection, which sits more comfortably alongside the animations of Jan Svankmajer than any English poetic tradition.

"The Dog in the Sky" offers a view of the world that is skewed, vibrant and larger than life. Here, words turn into tiger-moths or laughing birds, the Minotaur finds his Ariadne and Pinochio's sister cuts loose from her strings.