Sarah Wimbush Readings and Workshops
'I loved this stunning and substantial collection that enfolds us into the lives and experiences of Roma communities and explores mining heritage in Yorkshire.' - Will Mackie, New Writing North (New & recent poetry from the North) on Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands
Sarah Wimbush is a Leeds poet who was brought up in Doncaster. She has published two pamphlets: Bloodlines (Seren, 2020), winner of the Mslexia/PBS Poetry Pamphlet Competition 2019, which was also shortlisted in the Michael Marks Awards, and The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster (Smith|Doorstop, 2021), a winner of the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition in 2020. Her debut collection Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands was published by Bloodaxe on 26 May 2022, and launched online on 31 May (video below) and at Cheltenham Poetry Festival.
In Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands, her first book-length collection, Sarah Wimbush journeys through myth and memory with poetry rooted in Yorkshire. From fireside tales of Romany Gypsies and Travellers, through pit villages and the haunt of the Miners’ Strike, to the subliminal of the everyday – including poems about typists, pencil sharpeners and learning to drive in a Ford Capri. This highly accomplished debut collection explores what it means to belong, what it means to be on the margins. This is poetry written in praise of family and community and those qualities which make us human: love, language and, most of all, resilience.
Sarah Wimbush will be reading from her new collection STRIKE throughout 2024-25. STRIKE (Stairwell, 2024) is a book of poems and photographs commemorating the 40th anniversary of the miners' strike. Several poems previously appeared in Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands (Bloodaxe Books, 2022), and other poems from this collection will be included at readings. Details of forthcoming readings can be found on Sarah Wimbush's linktree here as they become available.
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Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands was Atrium's featured publication for May-June 2022. Four poems from the book are featured here.
‘Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands is wise, witty and generous… It’s a fresh and alive space of reflection, and a celebration of a voiceless people; an elegy to a way of life, and to a language.’ – Maggie Mackay, The Friday Poem
An in-depth review featured in The Friday Poem on 8 July 2022. Read in full here.
Steve Whitaker wrote an in-depth review for The Yorkshire Times, which is online here.
'It is a magnificent collection, and hard to credit as a debut.' - James Roderick Burns appreciates the atmospheric detail in an admirable first full collection in London Grip here.
A three-page interview with Sarah Wimbush was included in the Summer 2022 issue of Spelt magazine. An interview and review featured in the Autumn 2022 issue of Mslexia magazine.
‘Wimbush is akin to Carol Ann Duffy in her mastery of the dramatic monologue, using the genre to bring to life strong, defiant women... Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands is a rich, matrilineal quilt of a collection in which language is an heirloom intangibly precious yet so generously given. Wimbush’s poems form complete worlds on the page that keep turning after it ends, full of characters who refuse to be written out of history.’ – Ellora Sutton, Mslexia
PAST EVENTS
Ledbury Poetry Festival, July 2022, Wagtail Women
Sarah Wimbush read at the Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2022. Audio for this wonderful joint event with Raine Geoghegan can be heard on Ledbury Poetry Player here.
Both Sarah and Raine also read poems by fellow poet Jo Clement, who was unable to attend. Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley introduced the event, and also read a poem by Jo.
JOINT LAUNCH EVENT ON 31 MAY 2022
Tuesday 31 May 2022, live-streamed launch reading by Jo Clement, Sarah Wimbush and Clare Shaw
Bloodaxe's joint launch reading by Jo Clement, Sarah Wimbush and Clare Shaw celebrating the publication of their new poetry collections was live-streamed on 31 May 2022, and is now on YouTube. They were reading from and discussing their new collections with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley, and with each other. All three poets have won Northern Writers' Awards for poems included in these collections.
Jo Clement read first in each set, followed by Sarah Wimbush. They were reading from their first full collections Outlandish and Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands. Clare Shaw was reading from their fourth collection, Towards a General Theory of Love. Passionate, mesmerising readings from all three poets, followed by a wonderful discussion during which they drew out the connections between their three books.
FILM POEMS
Sarah Wimbush's new poem 'Little Red' was a winner of the Poetry Society's Members' Poems competition in the Summer 2022 issue of Poetry News on the theme of 'Magical Nature' judged by Ian Humphreys.
[18 May 2022]
