No Map Could Show Them

A highly intelligent, yet very accessible collection and an interesting addition to the ongoing discussion of where our culture is with gender identity… There is something which feels very necessary about this collection and there are moments throughout where it feels like a worthy successor to The Feminine Gospels and The World’s Wife. * Huffington Post *
Wonderfully playful… In the crowded field of mountain literature, this precise, sparky and constantly surprising book more than holds its own. – Roger Cox * Scotsman *
A perfect response to the chauvinism face by the earliest female mountaineers… This precise, sparky and constantly surprising book more than holds its own. – Roger Cox * Yorkshire Post *
Superb young Sheffield poet. – Horatia Harrod * Financial Times *
Mort’s assurance keeps us on edge, but trustful. One could say she doesn’t put a foot wrong. Her style is spare, showing bone without too much flesh… This is a strong, fierce collection. – Peter Scupham * Literary Review *
An unforgettable perspective on the heights we scale…. Distinctive and courageous, these are poems of passion and precipices, of edges and extremes. No Map Could Show Them confirms Helen Mort’s position as one of the finest young poets at work today. * Climb Magazine *
Mort’s work is firmly in the tradition [of] the greatest modern and contemporary English language poets. She’s channeling Philip Larkin’s shady pathos, and she’s hanging out in Derek Mahon’s forgotten places… Brilliantly laconic, perfectly-timed, sometimes playful…[with and] uncanny attention to detail. * Climb Magazine *
This is a brilliant collection, thrilling in its explorations of our bodies as geological structures, and of our obsessions with mountains, stone and ice. It will come to be seen as an important book about gender and mountaineering, as well as much besides and beyond. – Robert Macfarlane

Helen Mort has published three collections of poetry:

• Division Street (2013), winner of the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize
• No Map Could Show Them (2016)
• The Illustrated Woman (2022)

Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Forward, T. S. Eliot, and Costa Prizes.

She has written a novel, Black Car Burning (2019), and a short story collection, Exire (2019).

Her creative non-fiction includes:

• A Line Above The Sky (2022), winner of the Boardman Tasker Award
• Ethel (2024)

She is a Professor in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and lives in Sheffield.

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