Stepmother by Helen Mort
Poetry Book Society Recommendation Autumn 2026
Chatto & Windus
When a new relationship casts poet Helen Mort in the role of stepmother, she embarks on a personal quest for understanding; moving across verse and personal essay, from fairytale to modern blended family.
Turning a bold and inventive gaze on this neglected dimension of female experience, these are candid dispatches from the shifting terrain of the modern family. As playful as it is moving, STEPMOTHER radiates Mort’s signature empathetic warmth, but with the bite of truth.
Mort interleaves ravishing fragments of lyric essay with gothic flights into verse that draw us deep into the woods of upon-a-time, and back, changed, into the now. Groundbreaking and transformative, tender and uncompromising, STEPMOTHER has much to teach us about female power and the fear it still provokes, our openness to change, and the surprising shapes love can take.
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