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A problem with a piece of writing often clarifies itself if you go for a long walk.

Helen Dunmore

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Helen Dunmore
Age: 64 †
Born: 1952
Born: December 12
Died: 2017
Died: June 5
Poet
Writer
Beverley
East Riding of Yorkshire
Long
Clarifies
Piece
Walk
Pieces
Walks
Often
Problem
Writing

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i wish i was away in Ingo far across the briny sea sailing over deepest waters where neither care nore worry trouble me
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The human longing for story is so powerful, so primitive, that it seems like something not learned, but locked into our genes.
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I was always influenced by language.
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Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn't work, throw it away. It's a nice feeling, and you don't want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.
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If the garden of Eden really exists it does so moment by moment, fragmented and tough, cropping up like a fan of buddleia high up in the gutter of a deserted warehouse, or in a heap of frozen cabbages becoming luminous in the reflected light of roadside snow.
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For you where never my blood sister so no more shall I call you little sister
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I hope that readers will tear through my books because they can't stop themselves - and then, maybe, read them again and find new things there.
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Once one habit peels away the others follow it. You have to hold on, or the next thing you'll find yourself parading down the street in your nightdress. Habit is everything.
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Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country.
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I concentrate on the lives of individuals whom the reader comes to know and feel with intimately.
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I didn't choose Russia but Russia chose me. I had been fascinated from an early age by the culture, the language, the literature and the history to the place.
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My first collection of poems was published by Bloodaxe Books, which was then a very new imprint.
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I would like people to come into my Dreamworld and then choose to stay.
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Writing poetry makes you intensely conscious of how words sound, both aloud and inside the head of the reader. You learn the weight of words and how they sound to the ear.
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However, I began to submit poems to British magazines, and some were accepted. It was a great moment to see my first poems published. It felt like entering a tradition.
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As individuals, we are shaped by story from the time of birth we are formed by what we are told by our parents, our teachers, our intimates.
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If we understand the past, we are more likely to recognise what is happening around us.
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We are creatures of story.
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Mourning Ruby is not a flat landscape: it is more like a box with pictures painted on every face. And each face is also a door which opens, I hope, to take the reader deep into the book.
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However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.
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