December 12 1952

Helen Dunmore (December 12, 1952) is a British writer. From her book Out of the Blue: Poems 1975-2001 (2001) we find a poem beginning "Viking cat in the dark" which includes "Viking cat in the dark is paw-licked velvet, sinew of shadow, a thread of smoke bitterly burning, a quiver of black like a riddle..." Dunmore was shortlisted for the 1997 T. S. Eliot Prize for her collection Bestiary.

Here is a brief bio---

Born in Yorkshire in 1952, Helen Dunmore studied English at York University and taught in Finland for two years before publishing her first book.

She has worked as a writer, reader, performer and teacher of Poetry and Creative Writing, tutoring residential writing courses for the Arvon Foundation and taking part in the Poetry Society's Writer in Schools scheme. She has also taught at the University of Glamorgan, the University of Bristol's Continuing Education Department and for the Open College of the Arts. She also reviews for The Times and The Observer, contributes to arts programmes on BBC Radio and has been a judge for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Book of the Year award.

Her poetry collections include The Apple Fall (1983); The Sea Skater (1986) which won the Alice Hunt Bartlett Award in 1987 ... and most recently, Glad Of These Times (2007). In 2010, her poem, 'Malarkey', won the National Poetry Competition and was published as a collection in 2012.

At this link above, there is a list of her publications, poetry, novels, children's literature and short stories. A long list--she's done much more than we mention.