Counting Backwards by Dunmore, Helen -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Description Title Page Acknowledgements Contents Inside the Wave (2017)

Counting Backwards The Underworld Shutting the Gate In Praise of the Piano Re-opening the old mines Inside the Wave Odysseus to Elpenor Plane tree outside Ward 78 The shaft Leave the door open My life’s stem was cut The Bare Leg The Place of Ordinary Souls My daughter as Penelope The Lamplighter The Halt Bluebell Hollows A Loose Curl Hornsea, 1952 Festival of stone A Bit of Love Winter Balcony with Dunnocks Mimosa Nightfall in the IKEA Kitchen The Duration At the Spit Terra Incognita Four cormorants, one swan Girl in the Blue Pool February 12th 1994 What shall I do for my sister in the day she shall be spoken for? In Secret All the breaths of your life Her children look for her Little papoose Cliffs of Fall Five Versions from Catullus

1 Through Babel of Nations 2 Undone 3 Sirmio 4 Dedication 5 Sparrow

Rim On looking through the handle of a cup Ten Books Subtraction My people September Rain Hold out your arms

The Malarkey (2012)

The Malarkey Come Out Now The Inbox Boatman I Owned a Woman Once Longman English Series Writ in Water Dis Newgate At Ease Harbinger The Hyacinths The Night Workers Agapanthus above Porthmeor Visible and Invisible The Snowfield Lemon tree in November Bildad Skulking Basement at Eighteen Folgate Street Barclays Bank, St Ives Playing Her Pieces Pianist, 103, The Torn Ship Taken in Shadows Prince Felipe Prospero (1657-1661) Picture Messages Lethe The Queue’s Essentially The Captainess of Laundry The Day’s Umbrellas The Deciphering The Tarn The Gift What Will You Say Cloud I Have Been Thinking of You So Loudly The Kingdom of the Dead The Last Heartbeat The Old Mastery The Overcoat Window Cleaners at Ladysmith Road I Heard You Sing in the Dark La Recouvrance The Filament

Glad of These Times (2007)

City lilacs Crossing the field Litany Don’t count John among the dreams The other side of the sky’s dark room Convolvulus The grey lilo Yellow butterflies Plume Odysseus The blue garden Violets The rowan Barnoon Getting into the car Glad of these times Off-script ‘Indeed we are all made from the dust of stars’ Tulip Beautiful today the Dead gull on Porthmeor Narcissi Dolphins whistling Borrowed light A winter imagination Athletes Pneumonia Wall is the book Gorse Blackberries after Michaelmas To my nine-year-old self Fallen angel Bridal Still life with ironing Spanish Irish Cowboys Below Hungerford Bridge Ophelia Winter bonfire One A.M. Lemon and stars Cutting open the lemons Hearing owls ‘Often they go just before dawn’ May voyage

Out of the Blue (2001)

Out of the Blue The man on the roof Giraffes in Hull Jacob’s drum That old cinema of memory Depot A lorry-load of stuff Virgin with Two Cardigans Ice coming Cyclamen, blood-red Piers Plowman: The Crucifixion & Harrowing of Hell Smoke Bristol Docks The spill Without remission The rain’s coming in As good as it gets If only Mr Lear’s Ring Fortune-teller on Church Road Sleeveless The point of not returning The form The sentence With short, harsh breaths The footfall The coffin-makers Inside out The blessing

FROM Bestiary (1997)

Candle poem At the Emporium Next door He lived next door all his life Under the leaves * The surgeon husband Fishing beyond sunset Hare in the snow Need Sometimes in the rough garden of city spaces I should like to be buried in a summer forest The scattering All the things you are not yet Ferns on a hospital window* Diving girl A pretty shape Viking cat in the dark Baby sleep Frostbite Basketball player on Pentecost Monday Tiger lookout Tiger Moth caterpillar Hungry Thames The wasp On growing a black tulip * Little Ellie and the timeshare salesman Bouncing boy Ghost at noon Greek beads Tea at Brandt’s We are men, not beasts

FROM Recovering a Body (1994)

To Virgil Three Ways of Recovering a Body Holiday to Lonely Poem in a Hotel The Bike Lane Drink and the Devil Ahvenanmaa Rubbing Down the Horse You came back to life in its sweetness Heimat In the Desert Knowing Nothing Poem on the Obliteration of 100,000 Iraqi Soldiers The Yellow Sky Getting the Strap Adders The conception Scan at 8 weeks Pedalo Beetroot Soup The Diving Reflex Bathing at Balnacarry Boys on the Top Board Sylvette Scrubbing Babes in the Wood Cajun Then I think how the train * Skips Time by Accurist The Silent Man in Waterstones The Wardrobe Mistress When You’ve Got Afterword *

FROM Secrets (1994)

Lemon sole Christmas caves That violet-haired lady Whooper swans Snow Queen The cuckoo game The butcher’s daughter The greenfield ghost Herring girl Russian doll Breeze of ghosts

FROM Short Days, Long Nights (1991)

Those shady girls The dream-life of priests Sisters leaving before the dance On not writing certain poems Privacy of rain Dancing man At Cabourg II Baron Hardup Nearly May Day Three workmen with blue pails Brown coal Safe period Big barbershop man The dry well Our family, swimming again * Sweet pepper * Heron One yellow chicken Sailing to Cuba Off the West Pier Winter 1955 Rinsing To Betty, swimming In Berber’s Ice Cream Parlour On drinking lime juice in September * Not going to the forest Lutherans

FROM The Raw Garden (1988)

Code-breaking in the Garden of Eden Seal run Wild strawberries A mortgage on a pear tree A pæony truss on Sussex Place Permafrost At Cabourg Ploughing the roughlands The land pensions A dream of wool New crops Shadows of my mother against a wall Air layering The argument The peach house A meditation on the glasshouses The haunting of Epworth Preaching at Gwennap On circuit from Heptonstall Chapel US 1st Division Airborne Ranger at rest in Honduras One more for the beautiful table Lambkin Dublin 1971 The hard-hearted husband Malta Candlemas Pilgrims An Irish miner in Staffordshire

FROM The Sea Skater (1986)

The bride’s nights in a strange village Lazarus * Christmas roses I imagine you sent back from Africa The knight * In memoriam Cyril Smith 1913-1945 The parachute packers Porpoise washed up on the beach In deep water Lady Macduff and the primroses Mary Shelley The plum tree The air-blue gown My sad descendants Patrick at four years old on Bonfire Night The horse landscape Thetis In the tents Uncle Will’s telegram Rapunzel Bewick’s swans * The sea skater In the tea house Florence in permafrost Missile launcher passing at night

FROM The Apple Fall (1983)

The marshalling yard A cow here in the June meadow Zelda Annunciation off East Street * The Polish husband The damson In Rodmell Garden The apple fall Pictures of a Chinese nursery * Pharaoh’s daughter Domestic poem Patrick I Patrick II Weaning Clinic day * Approaches to winter The night chemist St Paul’s Poem for December 28 Greenham Common Poem for hidden women If no revolution come A safe light Near Dawlish The last day of the exhausted month Second marriages * The deserted table The writer’s son Ollie and Charles at St Andrew’s Park Winter fairs In a wood near Turku Landscape from the Monet Exhibition at Cardiff Breakfast

Index of Titles and First Lines About the Author Copyright