Dunmore posthumously awarded Costa Book of the Year for ‘Inside the Wave’

In the UK, the late Helen Dunmore has been awarded the £30,000 (A$51,700) Costa Book of the Year award for her poetry collection Inside the Wave (Bloodaxe Books), reports the Bookseller.

Inside the Wave is the first poetry book to have won the prize since 2010. Dunmore died from cancer in June 2017, and the poems focus on mortality and ‘the borderline between the living and the dead’.

Judging panel chair Wendy Holden said the judges ‘all felt it was a modern classic’. ‘It was a collection of poems with a very strong message, and even though they were written by the author that was dying they were very life affirming and they would appeal—which is Costa’s ideal—to a wide range of people, even people who didn’t usually read poetry,’ Holden said. ‘It’s a fantastic collection, incredibly moving, incredibly strong, by an author right at the top of her game. It was a very close decision but one everybody was ultimately very happy with.’

Dunmore was chosen as the overall winner over the four other category winners announced earlier this month.

Category: International news