The poet & the collections
I am a Renfrewshire based writer and poet. Born in Cheshire, my working life in Yorkshire was spent in the arts as a curator, critic, gallery owner and writer, before moving to Scotland in 2006.
I have published four collections of poems and make handmade books of collections and individual poems. Since 2009 I have exhibited at By Leaves We Live at the Scottish Poetry Library, at Scottish Pamphlet Poetry events at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Stanza and at the Scottish International Artists Bookfair. In 2010 I read at the Ilkley Literature Festival, and again in 2011 when I presented a two-woman show based on A KINDNESS OF WOMEN with my daughter, actress Cathy Sara. The collection described below has been shortlisted for the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award; the winner will be announced on 17 May at the National Library of Scotland.
The genesis of SOME CONSEQUENCES OF SAYING YES was a brief encounter between two married people in 1979: their first and last meeting for 25 years. Then he (a Scot) set out to find her (me in Yorkshire); I was found and in 2006 I married him and came to live in Scotland. These poems describe and celebrate some aspects of the ultimate consequences of that long-ago saying “Yes”.
Newly published, the poems in A KINDNESS OF WOMEN explore six decades of a woman’s experience, reflecting on motherhood, the values women put on kindness and jam-making, generosity and friendship. Women in art and history have also inspired poems as well as the legacies women pass on to each other. Pamphlet designed by Den Stubbs and hand stitched, £5
HEARTWOOD is a recently made collection of poems written for the exhibition Secret Life of Trees which took place in North Yorkshire in 2002 in which a painter, photographer, sculptor and the poet celebrated trees of significance to them, in particular a venerable Nidderdale oak. Handmade and stitched, printed on art papers, signed. £5
AT THE MARGINS (as Mary Sara) published by Hawksworth Art in 2003. A collection culled from over 20 years writing – and a celebration of Nidderdale. Signed. ISBN 0-9544521-1-9 £5
Click the images to see a poem from each collection:
