Spiritlands

Sarah Wardle was born in London in 1969. She was educated at Cheltenham Ladies’ College; Oxford, where she read Classics; and Sussex, where she read English. She won Poetry Review’s new poet of the year award in 1999 and her first collection, Fields Away (Bloodaxe Books, 2003), was shortlisted for the Forward best first collection prize. Her second book, SCORE! (Bloodaxe Books, 2005), included some of the poems she broadcast while poet-in-residence for Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, as well as the script of a film-poem, ‘X: A Poetry Political Broadcast’. A Knowable World (Bloodaxe Books, 2009) followed her detainment in a Central London psychiatric hospital. Her most recent Bloodaxe collections are Beyond (2014) and Spiritlands (2019). She has been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, and works as lecturer in poetry at Middlesex University and as a creative writing tutor for Morley College, Westminster Kingsway College and the Workers’ Educational Association.

• 9 Song for World10 The Golden Bough11 Votive12 Spiritlands15 Amina’s Truth16 Night Nurses17 First-hand Evidence18 In the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe19 The Spirit to Solve20 Human Spirit22 Pamphleteering23 At Dove Cottage24 Schoolgirl to Teacher25 Mr Wales26 Careless Whisper27 Art Therapy28 On Empty Street29 City Rain30 Mill-hands Conversing, 191931 Still Life32 Umbrella33 US34 Modern Classics35 Artistic Preference36 Letter to the Third Millennium37 At Home with the Celts38 Cassie At Six39 Topspin Theory40 Lotus41 Dreamtime42 Abigail’s Wedding43 Amanda44 Blue Rosette45 Out on the Hustings, 197446 Oxfords of the Mind47 Autumn Effect at Argenteuil48 Spirit Horse49 Midlander52 On Connecting53 Howling Wolf54 Soraya and the Spider57 May Morning58 May Sunday59 Reminiscence at the Community Centre60 Making61 Kissing in English62 After Astrup63 On Woodland

Sarah Wardle writes with great humanity and makes A Knowable World of the indignity, frustrations and fear of acute episodes of mental illness. That’s how she manages to get her readers to empathise with all those in the community, both in and out of hospital, who live with the stigma of madness’ – Rabbi Baroness Julia Neuberger.