Sally Richards

“Sally Richards' poetry is a true emotional shot for any reader, rinsed from the murkier of human preoccupations: death, life, love - and the fear and rapture of all three. Perennial themes yes, but expressed by Richards in a surprising and refreshing way. Her poetry is scored with subtle musicality, a popular lyric sensibility, most typified by her haunting refrains. Above all, Richards' poetry shares itself with us, as true poetry should. Stained Glass is a deeply rewarding debut from an unassuming but talented new voice.”

Alan Morrison, mentor

"Thank you Sally Richards for such an excellent and deeply thought provoking solo collection…So many of the poems are outstanding and have already become favorites of mine but in particular I'm especially drawn into the power of the cosmic hopefulness of Aeon (page 38)

I blinked
the sky turned over
a wave of starlight
rolled
through my hair

and gripped by the almost overwhelmingly intensity of Love (page 27) where the third (the middle) stanza out cries:

He's lost to it; the mire;
eyes now wild, empty;
vision displaced -
cold windows
to an even colder psyche
in tatters.

i very highly recommend it to all readers of poetry - to all thinkers of and about poetry - as well as to all writers. Buy it, read it, give it as a present for others to enjoy!"

Steve Mann, poet, author cui bono?

“A brilliant poet”

David Kessel, Survivors’ Poetry author

"...darkly enchanting lyricism…nakedness of spirit...her own distinctive means of expression...often refreshingly confessional...explorative of her own obsessions..."

Alan Morrison – poet & playwright www.therecusant.org.uk

Stained Glass, a powerful new collection of poetry from Shrewsbury poet Sally Richards, has just been launched at Shrewsbury Market Hall and The Poetry Café in London, as one of a series of pamphlets from the Survivors’ Poetry National Mentoring Scheme. The collection has already garnered critical notice from the Shropshire Star, the Shropshire Chronicle and Country and Border Life Magazine, for which Richards’ is Poet in Residence.

Press release reviews

At a packed Poetry Café in London’s Covent Garden, Richards read a selection from Stained Glass to an engrossed audience of poets and poetry lovers, all immediately drawn to her lyrical, emotionally compelling work, which beguiles with its nakedness of spirit. The audience’s appreciation was evident in the quantity of Stained Glass bought that night by Richards’ admirers.

Press release reviews

‘Stained ‘Glass’ is a great title for this collection by a bruised ex-convent girl, now a graceful Shropshire poet whose voice has been silenced more than once by the emotional trammels of life along the way. To borrow a stanza from the book…

She’s been through a lot
been shut down,
lost the plot
lost some of her hair
down the plug.

But these days, the introduction to this book tells us, ‘the fragments are coming back together’. Sally Richards is very much a product of the rich and beautiful landscape she grew up in and is known in Shropshire for her poetic treatments of favourite natural landmarks….I think of her work as ‘delicate’ and ‘light’ but there is nothing frivolous or superficial about it. She has the ability to weave words, with minimal punctuation, in a way that seems weightless on the eye, on the page – but the message they carry is as clear as cold steel. In this collection a narrator tells us that…

Just as the softness of reflected trees
begins to lull her into a painless place
dark descends, a different light calls

Kay Green –author, editor Circaidy Gregory Press