Sarah Wardle was poet-in-residence with Tottenham Hotspur FC when many of these poems were written. Her Score! is a winning commentary on contemporary culture, shooting at the heart of consciousness, family, sport, the female voice and Darwinian science.
Her second collection kicks off with her Spurs poems, tackling the common ground between goals of competition and community. Then X: A Poetry Political Broadcast presents poetry as a beacon of imagination, choice and responsibility: the still, small voice that guides us through life’s terrain. Score! is completed by Sheet Music, a medley of poems ranging from London to Stone Age man, Schrödinger's Cat to Nelson’s Column.
‘Imaginatively playful and technically experimental, Score! combines humour…with a flair for applying language sensuously’ – Robyn Bolam, Poetry Review.
‘She writes with admirable clarity and power of her experience of mental illness and some of her poems of childhood memories…are delightful. Her range is wide, encompassing travel, the urban and the pastoral as well as poignant poems of unfulfilled love’ – Vernon Scannell, Sunday Telegraph.
‘This poet rejoices in poetry. Wardle writes with a jauntiness and a grasp of the need to be clear; and courage, the sort that took on and put behind her the dark things and the different, writer’s courage, which dares to be understood and judged’ – Edward Pearce, Tribune.
