Sarah Holland-Batt Readings
'Weaving themes of loss, memory, and transformation, Holland-Batt stuns in this powerful volume that draws from her previous collections.' – Publishers Weekly, on The Jaguar: Selected Poems
Australian poet Sarah Holland-Batt published The Jaguar: Selected Poems with Bloodaxe in September 2024. Sarah launched the book with a month-long UK reading tour in October and November 2024. Scroll down to watch videos of her joint online reading and discussion event with Bloodaxe and films of her reading from The Jaguar: Selected Poems.
With its rich selection from her three books of poetry, up to and including her her Stella Prize-winning collection The Jaguar (2022), this volume introduces one of Australia’s best-known and widely read poets to many readers for the first time.
The Jaguar: Selected Poems is distributed in the USA by Consortium Book Sales.
The poem 'The Gift' is featured in The New Yorker here, where you can also listen to her read it. 'The Gift' is included in The Jaguar: Selected Poems.
An excellent review was featured in Publishers Weekly's November 2024 issue here.
'Weaving themes of loss, memory, and transformation, Holland-Batt stuns in this powerful volume that draws from her previous collections. [...] Throughout, the natural world—urban or wild—gives voice to internal reckonings.' – Publishers Weekly, on The Jaguar: Selected Poems
'The UK debut of a stand-out Australian poet of her generation, The Jaguar: Selected Poems by Sarah Holland-Batt presents a generous selection from three collections [...] this poet's world is in ultra-high definition.' – Jaya Savige, The Times Literary Supplement
Available in full online by subscription. Most of the review can be read online on the TLS website here.
‘Sarah Holland-Batt’s The Jaguar: Selected Poems is a very substantial volume bringing together work from her three collections published in Australia. Its sumptuous production chimes happily with the style of her writing: culturally sophisticated and highly intelligent as she clearly is, it’s above all the seemingly effortless sensuous evocativeness of her work that makes an impression from the beginning. […] an enjoyable and richly rewarding book.' – Edmund Prestwich, The High Window
Read the full review in The High Window here.
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Sarah Holland-Batt's piece in The Guardian of 21 September 2024 about the establishment of an Australian Poet Laureate can be read here. The article was extracted from a keynote address delivered at the University of Technology Sydney on 20 September 2024.
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Sarah gave readings at Berwick and Ilkley Literature Festivals, plus at venues and universities in Leeds, Bath, St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cambridge, Newcastle and Oxford.
A review of The Jaguar: Selected Poems and Sarah's joint reading with Dzifa Benson at NCLA in Newcastle is on Write Out Loud here. A video of this event will be made available in due course.
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Eleanor Livingstone in conversation with Sarah Holland-Batt
Eleanor Livingstone, poet and former director of Stanza, International Poetry Festival at St Andrews, in conversation with the Australian poet, Sarah Holland-Batt, on how poetry festivals help poets, on language and metaphor, on the necessity of looking outwards as well as inwards in writing. Holland-Batt also introduces her new Bloodaxe retrospective, The Jaguar: Selected Poems, and the personal dimensions of the poetry collected within.
This fascinating conversation was recorded via Zoom while Sarah was still on tour in the UK. As well as talking about her life and poetry, Sarah read and introduced three poems from her new retrospective The Jaguar: Selected Poems - ‘My Father as a Giant Koi’, ‘The Jaguar’ and ‘Thalassography’. Sarah introduced her first poem at 13:45, and read her final poem from 39:00.
PAST EVENTS
Tuesday 24 September 2024, 7pm BST
Online launch reading by Nia Broomhall, Niall Campbell, Sarah Holland-Batt and Laura Wittner, with translator Juana Adcock
Sarah Holland-Batt joined the authors of our other September titles to celebrate the publication of their books with readings and discussion. This free Bloodaxe launch event was streamed on YouTube Live and is now available on this YouTube page: https://youtube.com/live/GIeiEhAvavQ
Sarah joined the event live from Australia. The breaking dawn could be seen in the window behind her during the discussion part of this wonderful event.
Sarah Holland-Batt at Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts - 7 November 2024
Sarah Holland-Batt read poems from The Jaguar: Selected Poems alongside Dzifa Benson at this event at Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts.
Sarah Holland-Batt reads from The Jaguar: Selected Poems
Sarah Holland-Batt reads and introduces her poems from The Jaguar: Selected Poems. Neil Astley filmed Sarah in November 2024 at Eastburn in Hexham, where Bloodaxe’s offices are located.
In video 1 she reads six poems from her first Australian collection, Aria (2008): ‘Pocket Mirror’, ‘Cavendish Road’, ‘Letter to Robert Lowell’, ‘Shore Acres’, ‘The Idea of Mountain’ and ‘The Art of Disappearing’. In video 2 she reads these poems from The Hazards (2015): ‘Medusa’, ‘This Landscape Before Me’, ‘Essay on the Toucan’, ‘The Atlantic’, ‘No End to Images’ and ‘The Hazards’. In video 3 she reads these poems from The Jaguar (2022): ‘My Father as a Giant Koi’, ‘Empires of Mind’, ‘The Jaguar’, ‘Time Remaining’ and ‘The Outing’.
[31 July 2024]
