Helen Dunmore wins posthumous Costa award for poetry written weeks before she died

The poet and novelist completed her last anthology weeks before she died in June 2017

Dunmore died in June 2017 aged 64 after completing her anthology Inside the Wave (Charlie Forgham Bailey)

The poet and novelist Helen Dunmore has won the Costa Book prize for a collection of poetry completed in the last weeks of her life.

She was named along with four other writers who won across five categories in the Costa Book Awards.

Dunmore died in June 2017 aged 64 after completing her anthology Inside the Wave. She had been diagnosed with cancer while writing her final novel Birdcage Walk published in March 2017.

Her winning anthology includes her final poem Hold Out Your Arms, which was written shortly before her death. It begins:

Death, hold out your arms for me

Embrace me

Give me your motherly caress,

Through all this suffering

You have not forgotten me.

The judges called the collection “an astonishing set of poems” and “a final, great achievement”.

Her debut poetry collection, The Apple Fall, was published in 1983 and was one of the first anthologies to emerge from Neil Astley’s new Bloodaxe imprint.

The prize puts Dunmore in the running for the 2017 Costa book of the year, and she would be the second posthumous recipient of the award if she wins.

The bookies’ favourite to win is Scottish author Gail Honeyman with her debut novel Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine.

The Costa Book Awards are open solely to authors resident in the UK and Ireland for titles published in the last year.

An overall winner, chosen by a panel of judges, will be announced on January 30 in London.

2017 Costa Book Award Winners with odds from William Hill

Costa First Novel Award - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, Gail Honeyman (7-4)

Costa Novel Award - Reservoir 13, Jon McGregor (9-2)

Costa Biography Award - In The Days Of Rain, Rebecca Stott (6-1)

Costa Poetry Award - Inside the Wave, Helen Dunmore (2-1)

Costa Children's Book Award - The Explorer, Katherine Rundell (7-1)

Press Association contributed to this report