The Anatomical Venus

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 's 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 * on Waiting for Bluebeard *
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