Sally Goldsmith
Winner in the 2008 Book & Pamphlet Competition
Sally Goldsmith was a songwriter and community artist before she took to poetry.
Her songs and poems have been broadcast on Radio 4 in plays and features. She is the joint winner, with playwright Rony Robinson, of several radio awards including a Bronze Sony.
She was published in the 2006 anthology of the Arvon International Poetry Competition and her poems have appeared in magazines including Poetry Review and The North.
'Singer' is her first pamphlet and was a first-stage winner in the 2008 Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition chosen by Michael Longley.
She lives on the edge of Sheffield near the Peak District.
HARE GHAZAL
Fleet footed and solitary, makes a shallow scrape or hollow
in clumps of long grass. Does not burrow for hare
is leaping, zigzagging, doubling back. Somehow it all feels random,
unfocussed, the way you sit at the screen but can’t settle. You’re harebrained,
mad as, lolloping from one damn thing to another,
hopping and boxing yourself into this clumsy metaphor.
You think of dusk and the path in a moonscape of dunes,
still your mind, make a noose of it and call her, draw her
Bawty, Malkin, Scavernick, Skyper, Katie, Laverock,
Caproun, Whiddie, Cuttie, Wintail, Puss – yes, draw her, Poor Hare,
to where you first started her. She held herself in a stitchery of marram,
her glassy eye a window, perhaps a funnel. You pour, hourglass
yourself back into rank grass, trust that after the running
you will find your form and name: Old Sally; your creature: hare.
– Sally Goldsmith, 'Hare Ghazal' (from Singer, 2009)
Smith/Doorstop titles
Singer (pamphlet, 2009) was a winner in the 08 competition
Reviews
'This is a very fine book. There are delightful, exuberant poems of presence and recollection. Sally Goldsmith is a poet-naturalist with a wonderful eye, but also a fine ear for the language of the living world.' – David Morley
'This is the world as we almost know it: risky and seductive.' – David Harsent
On Sally's songs:
'What really gave the play legs were the songs especially written for the piece by Sally Goldsmith. “I’m Ernestine Flowers, I don’t like to complain…” sang one of the inmates in a tremulous voice and it wrung the heart.' – Sue Arnold, The Observer
Publicity
Complimentary copies of Smith/Doorstop titles are available for publicity or review, and a 40% discount is provided for trade sales. (Contact us using the form here.)
To book a Smith/Doorstop poet for a reading, talk or interview, contact The Poetry Business on marketing@poetrybusiness.co.uk or phone 0114 346 3037.
