Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist and lives in Norwich with her husband, the poet Martin Figura. She edits the webzine Ink Sweat & Tears and teaches for Arvon and online the for National Centre for Writing Academy. In 2024 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors, an award recognising the achievement and distinction of individual poets.
‘Helen Ivory, a highly individualistic poet and visual artist, conjures a world that is both magical and sharply real. As in freshly conceived fairy tales, everything is transmutable. She expresses the intrinsic strangenesses of life, and makes a brilliant contribution to female empowerment through poems that are disturbing, agile, and visually telling.’ – Monica Alvi, Cholmondeley Award co-judge
She has won an Eric Gregory Award and her fifth Bloodaxe Books collection, The Anatomical Venus was short-listed for the East Anglian Book Awards (2019) and won the East Anglian Writers ‘By the Cover’ Award (EABA 2019). The Anatomical Venus 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, is available here: www.bloodaxebooks.com
Fool’s World a collaborative Tarot with the artist Tom de Freston (Gatehouse Press) won the 2016 Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. Hear What the Moon Told Me, a book of collage/ mixed media/ acrylic painted poems was published in 2016 by Knives Forks and Spoons Press, and a chapbook Maps of the Abandoned City was published in January 2019 by SurVision. She has work translated into Polish, Ukrainian, Spanish, Croatian and Greek as part of Versopolis . Wunderkammer: New and Selected Poems (2023) is published in the US by MadHat Press.
She received ACE funding to to research and write her next collection for Bloodaxe Constructing a Witch which focusses in on the monstering and othering of women, and the fear of ageing femininity. It is published in October 2024 and is a PBS Winter Recommendation.
For some forthcoming gig dates, please see Martin’s fully comprehensive list! https://martinfigura.co.uk/gigs/