We look forward to welcoming Denise Saul to read her poetry on Tuesday 16th July, starting at 8 pm.
Denise Saul was born in London. She is a poet and fiction writer. White Narcissi (Flipped Eye Publishing), was Poetry Book Society (PBS)Pamphlet Choice for Autumn 2007. Her poetry has been published in a variety of US and UK magazines and anthologies. In 2008 she was selected for The Complete Works, a two-year advanced mentoring and development programme for ten black and Asian poets in the UK, organised by Spread The Word. Denise is the winner of the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize for her poem Leaving Abyssinia. Her House of Blue (Rack Press) was PBS Pamphlet Recommendation for Summer 2012.
Her first full collection is The Room Between Us (Pavilion Poetry, 2022) which was shortlisted for the 2022 TS Eliot Prize, and Longlisted for the Jhalak Prize in 2023. It was a PBS recommendation in 2022. In this collection, Denise Saul explores family and identity as she tells the story of a mother’s illness and subsequent aphasia, and a daughter’s ongoing role as carer. At the heart of their relationship is an awareness of the inadequacies of language to name painful experiences as together they start to know the world afresh.
Deeply affecting, the book finds a space for both the extraordinary and the ordinary, balancing all that is between. Such ‘betweenness’ creates a space to explore wider dynamics of power, and the epiphanies and aftershocks of ongoing loss.
Photograph by Amanda Pepper Photography.
The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society 