In Strange Horses, Olivia Byard creates visceral and muscular poetry that challenges all efforts to silence us. In a vast and eclectic journey she takes us as far back as the Bible, medieval times and Shakespeare, through to Keats, Eliot, Auden and Larkin, referencing self-harm and spirituality, Agincourt and Greenham Common, nursery rhymes and Gay Pride. Engaging with both British and Canadian landscapes, her poems spotlight life lived vividly, where respite and joys are hard won by courage, grim defiance and self-awareness. In this powerful and engaging book, even the difficult and ugly reveal possibilities for beauty.

“Olivia Byard’s new book shows the same virtues that gained From a Benediction such acclaim. These are clear-eyed poems of precision and clarity. They restore your faith in the power of poetry to help and to console.”
Bernard O’Donoghue

“Olivia Byard is a real poet.”
Alastair Fowler

Olivia Byard’s first collection, From a Benediction, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She was born in Newport, south Wales, and grew up on the Cotswolds and in Montreal, Canada, where she studied at Queen’s University and the University of Alberta. She now lives in Oxfordshire and works as a part-time Creative Writing tutor for the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education where she began, and still teaches, poetry workshops.