Quite a Quiet Introduction
...reedlike whispering in the wind...
Welcome!
The question you may be asking — I am, even if no one else is — is who am I and what am I doing here? The truth is I’m not sure. Some possible answers to the first question are below. But what I’m going to do on Substack is likely to be a creative exploration as much as anything else. One that may, or may not, pick up steam.
If this is anything like my life and website, it will be a small slice of writing life, sharing a love of words, photography and art. Within that, I’d potentially like to share pieces I’ve written for journals that are no longer running and maybe also some other creative content that can already be found on my website.
In case I don’t keep going with this as much or as often as I’d like, it should be said that much of what I’m likely to share is probably on or accessible from my website, in a more organised way than I may manage here and with some hypertext projects that can’t be replicated here.
This includes my ‘choose your own adventure’ ACE-funded multi-media hypertext poetry narrative > Room and also Lines of Love, a light-hearted multimedia quiz to help readers fine their (hopefully perfect) poetry love match.
Below is a more official third-person summary of who I am, as can be found on my website. What maybe less obvious there is my current (attempt at) focus on two novels, how important my family is to me and the role that nature and walking now play in my everyday life, as mapped photographically when I have the chance on my instagram page.
Whatever this Substack does or doesn’t become, hello, it’s lovely to connect here and I hope you’ll enjoy reading on!
Some more official versions of who I am
Sarah is a poet, fiction writer, journalist, occasional playwright, photographer, poetryfilm maker and arts reviewer, as well as editor at V. Press. Author of six poetry collections, four poetry pamphlets, a poetry-play, an ACE-funded multi-media hypertext poetry narrative > Room and two novellas, she also enjoys artistic commissions, mentoring and working as a writer in residence, and was delighted to be The High Window Resident Artist for 2019.
Books
Nine out of ten of Sarah’s solo poetry titles have won or been shortlisted/highly commended for an award. Darling Blue, which won the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize 2024 and combines ekphrastic poems with a book-length fictional narrative in poetry, is forthcoming with Indigo Dreams in 2025. Her eco-inspired pamphlet, RAIN FALLING (Wigtown Festival Company, 2023), won the Wigtown Poetry Prize Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize 2022. Sarah’s CP Aware Award Prize for Poetry 2021 collection Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic (Verve Poetry Press, 2022) was also highly commended in the Forward Prizes and shortlisted for the International Rubery Book Award 2023. Meanwhile, her Overton Poetry Prize 2020 chapbook Ten Lines of More Than Just Love Notes came out with Loughborough University in 2022.
Sarah’s other recently published books include a poetry pamphlet How to Grow Matches (Against The Grain Press), shortlisted in the International Rubery Book Awards 2018, finalist in the international Eyelands Book Awards 2019 and a poem featured as Guardian Poem of the Week, and a novella Always Another Twist (Mantle Lane Press, 2018). This is a sequel or companion novella to her novella Kaleidoscope, published by Mantle Lane Press in March 2017.
Other poetry titles include: Overton Poetry Prize pamphlet, Lampshades & Glass Rivers (Loughborough University, 2016), and the full-length poetry collection plenty-fish, published by Nine Arches Press in July 2015, previewed at Ledbury Poetry Festival and shortlisted in the International Rubery Book Awards 2016.
Working in both experimental and more mainstream styles, her The Magnetic Diaries (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, 2015), is a modern narrative in poems based on Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, and incorporating a supplementary multimedia element. The Magnetic Diaries was highly commended in the Forward Prize. Sarah’s one-act poetry-play version of the collection was selected for and performed by Reaction Theatre Makers at the 2015 Write On Festival at Hereford’s The Courtyard theatre, a ‘highly recommended show’ during its 2-week run at Edinburgh Fringe 2016 and on an ACE-funded 2016 tour including Ledbury Poetry Festival, Birmingham MAC and London’s The Vaults.
She also has a joint pamphlet with Angela Topping, entitled Hearth, that launched at Cheltenham Poetry Festival in April 2015 and was a PBS Autumn Pamphlet. Sarah’s second full-length poetry collection Be[yond] was published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press in July 2013 and her debut full-length poetry collection Into the Yell (Circaidy Gregory Press, 2010) won third prize in the International Rubery Book Awards 2011.
Poems/Poetryfilm
Sarah’s work has won a range of individual poem/unpublished manuscript prizes including first prize in the Pre-Raphaelite Society Poetry Prize 2024 and joint runner-up in the 2023 prize, winner of the Poetry Bites Poetry Competition 2022, joint first prize in the Victorina Press 2022 Vo(i)ces Poetry Contest and second prize in the Leeds Peace Poetry Competition 2022. She won the CP Aware Award Prize for Poetry 2021, first prize in the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine 2020, first prize in the Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival Poetry Competition 2019/2020, first prize in the 2020 Waltraud Field International Poetry Competition, first prize in the Barn Owl Trust Poetry Competition 2019, second prize in Lichfield Cathedral Poetry Competition 2019, second prize in the Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine 2018 and winner of the Positive Images Peace Festival Poetry Awards 2018. Other recent first prize wins include the Overton Poetry Prize 2015, Wordpool Festival Poetry Competition 2014 (with her poem animated for the Blackpool Illuminations) and the Poetry on Loan Poetry Competition 2014. She was also 1 of 111 poets (out of nearly 13,000 entries) longlisted in the National Poetry Competition 2015, highly commended in Wigtown Book Festival Poetry Competition 2017 and the Wirral Festival of Firsts poetry competition 2017 and shortlisted in the Paper Swans Press pamphlet competition 2017.
Individual poem publications include work in Poems of the Decade 2011-2020: An Anthology of the Forward Books of Poetry 2011-2020, the Guardian, Financial Times, Mslexia, The Rialto, Magma, PN Review, The Wolf, Tears in the Fence, Shearsman magazine, Envoi, Poetry Wales, The Forward Book of Poetry 2016, Lung Jazz: Young British Poets for Oxfam (Cinnamon Press), Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe) and Hwaet! (Bloodaxe).
Her poetry has featured on the BBC, on the Polesworth Poets’ Trail in Warwickshire and has been set to music, animated for the Blackpool Illuminations 2014, muralled on a café wall, on Worcester city centre pavements, on Worcestershire buses and around 12,000 copies of AGFA’s annual report distributed internationally. More publication and prize successes can be found on her full writing CV.
Sarah’s poetry films have screened at festivals including StAnza (Scotland’s International Poetry Festival), the International Poetryfilm Festival of Thuringia, Wirral Poetry Festival, and the Big Picture Festival. Other filmmakers’ poetry films created from Sarah’s poems have been shortlisted for Ó Bhéal International Poetry-Film Competition and been shown at Verve Poetry Festival, Ó Bhéal’s Winter Warmer festival and in the Blackpool Illuminations.
Stranger claims to 5-mins of fame include her poetry translated into Spanish, Polish, Romanian and Russian (through English PEN), a poem screened at a Bulgarian film festival (thanks to animators Emily & Anne), reading from the top of a glass cone furnace and poems shared in the American classroom.
Short/Flash Fiction
Sarah’s fiction successes include a manuscript shortlisted in the Gatehouse Press New Fictions Prize 15/16 and a novella-in-flash longlisted in the Reflex Press 2021 Novella Award. Her individual flash competition highlights include second prize in the Arundel Literary Festival Flash Fiction Competition 2024; first prize in the Weaver Words 2021 literature festival flash fiction competition, winner of the May 2021 Tortive Theatre 101 flash contest, winner in the Museum of Walking’s ‘autumn colours’ flash competition 2019, winner in the the Oxford Today thriller flash competition 2014, second prize in the Arundel Literary Festival Flash Fiction Competition 2024, highly commended in the Birmingham Mail, Birmingham Literature Festival and Virgin Trains flash fiction competition 2017, shortlisted in Flash500 competition in May 2017 and several times in the Tortive Theatre 101 flash contests. Her fiction has also been nominated for Best Small Fictions and published in Jellyfish Review, Ellipsis, The Fiction Pool, Under the Radar, Elbow Room, Fictive Dream, The Nottingham Review, Spelk, Litro Online, Reflex Fiction, Flash Frontier, The Ofi Press Literary Magazine, Riggwelter, Dodging the Rain, Bending Genres, Fragmented Voices, Mookychick, The Cabinet of Heed, Flash Fiction Magazine, Rockland, Literally Stories, CafeLit and Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine. She has five stories in Arachne Press’s Five by Five anthology and a longer literary fiction in the Legend Press anthology The Remarkable Everyday. More publication and prize successes can be found on her full writing CV.
Journalism/Creative Non-Fiction/Essays
Sarah was also longlisted (top nine) in the New Welsh Writing Awards 2018: Aberystwyth University Prize for an Essay Collection and longlisted (top nine) for the New Welsh Writing Awards 2017 memoir prize.
Before becoming a freelance writer, Sarah worked for several years as a regional newspaper reporter. Other articles/commissions include ‘Creative energy: how electromagnetic therapy inspired me’ – a 3000-word Wellcome Collection commissioned article, photos and poem about how rTMS inspired The Magnetic Diaries. More about her journalism and CNF can be found here.
Performing/Workshops/Residencies/Judging
A regular guest poet at spoken word events and festivals including Cheltenham Literature Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Cheltenham Poetry Festival, Swindon Big Poetry Weekend, Gloucester Poetry Festival, Nottingham Poetry Festival and the Carol Ann Duffy and Friends series at the Royal Exchange in Manchester, Sarah was also a guest poet in Cork and Limerick, after being selected for the 2013 Coventry-Cork twin city poets exchange.
Sarah has experience facilitating workshops and running spoken word events for festivals and other organisations. (More about this can be found here.)
She has been a judge for individual poem and poetry collection competitions.
Her other roles over the years include festival poet in residence at a church and café, and National Poetry Day writer in residence at Worcester Oxfam Bookshop, as well as The High Window Resident Artist for 2019.
Photography/Art
Sarah was The High Window Resident Artist for 2019, in the Top Five of the Borderlines Carlisle Book Festival photography competition 2019 and winner of the Droitwich Specsavers Opticians’ Life through a Lens photography contest 2008.
Her work has been widely published in and/or used as cover art for a range of journals, including Southlight, Door Is A Jar Literary Magazine, Bealtaine Magazine, Free Verse Revolution, Briefly Zine, The Lumiere Review, Nightingale & Sparrow, Littoral Magazine, Flash Frontier, The Blue Nib and Mslexia. She also designs book covers for V. Press poetry and flash fiction imprint (flash covers since 2016, poetry covers from September 2020 onwards).
Extracts of the poetry, photography and artwork featured in Sarah’s 2012 poetry-art exhibition aimed at bringing poetry to a wider audience can be found via An Eyeful of Words on her website. She also enjoys creative collaborations and film poetry. (Do get in touch if you have a poetry project idea.)
Sarah has also combined other writers’ words with her photos as LitWorld2 photographer and curator. More about her published photography/art can be found here.
Commissions
Sarah’s commissioned work spans across art, poetry, journalism and creative non-fiction. More information on past commissions can be found here.
Editing
Sarah runs V. Press poetry and flash fiction imprint — this year celebrating its tenth anniversary of publishing solo-author collections and chapbooks. Her other editing roles include Ledbury Poetry Festival 2019’s Guest Editor at Versopolis Review and joint poetry editor of Worcester Literary Festival magazine Be (2011/2012).
Groups/Reviewing/Academic/Writing Background
Sarah has run the Poetry Society’s Worcestershire Stanza for over 15 years and was secretary of Droitwich Arts Network from April 2011 to February 2015. She also reviews, and interviews other writers. More details about reviews here and interviews here.
A state-school Oxford University graduate with a 2:1 in modern languages (French and linguistics), Sarah also has a postgraduate diploma in print journalism from University of Wales, Cardiff, a Birmingham University Certificate of Higher Education (Creative Writing, 2003) and a masters in creative writing from Manchester Writing School at MMU (2014). She was part of Writing West Midlands’ Room 204 Writer Development Programme 2013/14 and one of the poets selected for the 2013 Coventry-Cork twin city poets exchange.
Her reading/writing interests include: sibling relationships; unreliable narrators, fragmented narratives and the interplay of first and third person viewpoints; gender roles in art and society, and female historic and contemporary archetypes; the self, personal and social identities; language, linguistics and artistic use of symbols; multimedia text interpretation; nature, environmental issues and language’s shaping potential; depression, mental health and ‘unseen’ disabilities in literature; the reader’s role in creating meaning.