Waiting for Bluebeard tries to understand how a girl could grow up to be the woman living in Bluebeard’s house. The story begins with a part-remembered, part-imagined childhood, where seances are held, and a father drowns in oil beneath the skeleton of his car. When her childhood home coughs up birds in the parlour, the girl enters Bluebeard’s house paying the tariff of a single layer of skin. This is only the first stage of her disappearing, as she searches for a phantom child in a house where Bluebeard haunts the corridors like a sobbing wolf.
Waiting for Bluebeard is Helen Ivory's fourth book of poems.
'Helen Ivory creates a troubled yet beguiling world rich in irony and disquiet. She possesses a strongly-grounded narrative voice which, combined with her dextrous transformative takes both on reality and on what lies beyond reality’s surface, puts one in mind of the darker side of Stevie Smith who said that poetry "is a strong explosion in the sky".' – Penelope Shuttle.
‘A direct approach, via deep folklore and dream imagery, to the conundrum of being a woman…in keeping with what I think we mean when we say "women’s writing". This book is mischievously dark, rich with anti-logic and harnessed to the power of something we used to call magic’ – Katy Evans-Bush.
'She is a visually precise poet, with the gift of creating stunning images with an economy of means…Ivory has established an eerily engaging style. Her poems are like mobiles suspended on invisible threads, charming to watch as they seem to spin by themselves in the air, but capable of administering more than a paper cut on the sensibility of the reader' – James Sutherland-Smith.
Helen Ivory reads from Waiting for Bluebeard
Helen Ivory reads and introduces six poems from Waiting for Bluebeard: ‘First Born’, ‘Sunday Morning’, ‘The House of Thorns’, ‘The Disappearing: 1’, ‘Rabbit Season’ and ‘Liminal’. Neil Astley filmed her reading from her book in Ledbury in June 2025.
Helen Ivory reads from The Anatomical Venus
Helen Ivory reads and introduces five poems from The Anatomical Venus : ‘The Fainting Room’, ‘Stripped’, ‘Hellish Nell’, ‘Six Signs You Might Be a Slattern’ and ‘Anger in Ladies &c’. Neil Astley filmed her reading from her book in Ledbury in June 2025.
Helen Ivory reads from Constructing a Witch
Helen Ivory reads and introduces six poems from Constructing a Witch: ‘The Waking’, ‘Some definitions of Witch’, ‘Only Bad Witches Are Ugly’, ‘The Gift’, ‘Resistance Spells’ and ‘The Change’. Neil Astley filmed her reading from her book in Ledbury in June 2025.
Ireland & EU: Click here to order from Books Upstairs in Dublin
USA: Click here to order from Indiebound or Bookshop.org
