Professor Helen Mort

Helen Mort joined the Department of English and Manchester Writing School as Lecturer in Creative Writing in September 2016. Helen is a poet and has published three collections with Chatto & Windus, ‘Division Street’ (winner of the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize, shortlisted for the Costa Prize and T.S. Eliot Prize), ‘No Map Could Show Them’ (2016) and ‘The Illustrated Woman’ (2022, shortlisted for the Forward Prize). Her first novel ‘Black Car Burning’ was published in 2018 and her memoir A Line Above The Sky was published in 2022 and shortlisted for the Boardman Tasker Prize for Mountain Literature.

Words of wisdom

“To know fully even one field or one land is a lifetime’s experience. In the world of poetic experience it is depth that counts, not width. A gap in a hedge, a smooth rock surfacing a narrow lane, a view of a woody meadow, the stream at the junction of four small fields - these are as much as a man can fully experience.” - Patrick Kavanagh

Academic and professional qualifications

PhD in English Literature, University of Sheffield

BA in Social and Political Sciences, Cambridge University

External examiner roles

University of Huddersfield

St Andrews University

Personal website address

http://www.helenmort.com/

About some of my books:

The Illustrated Woman (poetry) - The Illustrated Woman is a tender and incisive collection about what it means to live in a female body - from the joys and struggles of new motherhood to the trauma of deepfakes. Amidst the landscapes of the Peak District and the glaciers of Greenland, Helen Mort’s remarkable poems transfix the reader in a celebration of beauty and resilience.

A Line Above The Sky (life writing / nature writing / memoir) - A Line Above the Sky melds memoir and nature writing to ask why humans are drawn to danger, and how we can find freedom in pushing our limits. It is a visceral love letter to losing oneself in physicality, whether climbing a mountain or bringing a child into the world, and an unforgettable celebration of womanhood in all its forms.

No Map Could Show Them (poetry) - This collection offers a perspective on the heights we scale and the distances we run, the routes we follow and the paths we make for ourselves. Here are odes to the women who dared to break new ground – from Miss Jemima Morrell, a young Victorian woman from Yorkshire who hiked the Swiss Peaks in her skirts and petticoats, to the modern British mountaineer Alison Hargreaves, who died descending from the summit of K2.