"... Sally's prodigious range of allusion is light-fingered; and always voiced through her own unique sensibility. Her wide knowledge lives in the delicate mesh of her language… The poems seem to me to grow stronger, with some of the finest of all among the uncollected found after her death."- from the Preface by Marina WarnerContaining all her published work along with over 70 uncollected poems, this is the definitive edition of a poet with a growing body of admirers. Clive Wilmer spoke of "the ghostly music" of Sally Purcell's poetry and described her first book as "a miracle of chaste perfection". These qualities remained constant in her work. Sally Purcell was born in Bromsgrove, Worcs in 1944. She studied Mediaeval and Modern French at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and continued to live and work in Oxford (as typist, barmaid, researcher and, above all, writer) until her death in 1998.
Sally Purcell is a poet who is able to bypass the clutter of modern life. She makes use of many classical and celtic myths, yet manages to make use reimagine them in a way that renders each one vital to 21st human experience. For example, her poem 'Queen Proserpina Walks' we are shown a vision of a world in which we "invoke her gentleness" despite our knowlege of the inevitability of death. We long for "a brief & sudden breath of flowers" to keep with us in our eternal death.
Kay Ryan
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