Publications

My first full poetry collection To Know Bedrock is published by Pindrop Press and is available direct from pindrop's website. (See reviews below).

Previous work has appeared in Mslexia, Orbis, Envoi, Agenda, The Interpreter's House, Aesthetica Creative Works Annual, The Frogmore Papers, Earthlines, The New Writer, Iota and Popshot magazines, as well as several anthologies including Glimmer, Storm at Galesburg, The Visitors, Feeding the Cat, A Roof of Red Tiles (all Cinnamon Press), All the Way Home (Leaf Books), Up to Our Necks in It (Black Tulip Books) and A Complicated Way of Being Ignored (the Grist Poetry Anthology 2012).

A series of poems about breast cancer appeared in the July/Aug 2011 issue of The New Writer and a sequence of poems based on a painting by Isis Olivier appeared in Kaleidoscope: an anthology of sequences (pub. Cinnamon) in May 2011. Forthcoming work will appear in Orbis and Entanglements, an eco-poetry anthology published by Two Ravens Press.

The image on the cover of my book is by Isis Olivier, a fantastic artist who lives close to me in the south of France. See her work at http://isisolivier.com.

Reviews

Jan Fortune, founder of Cinnamon Press, in Envoi (Feb 2012):

"Pindrop Press is a new press with a keen eye for excellent poets. In her debut collection, 'To Know Bedrock', Envoi poet Sharon Black establishes an individual voice that moves from the tender to the unsettling. There is a deep sense of rootedness in these poems, whether to place, people or life itself, and an ability to combine rawness with deep compassion and a questing imagination, as in 'Trimester':

I who am being drawn
towards a new orbit,
towards a spill of milky stars
with which to seal my bones

or in 'Unborn':

You came to me too late - me, the mainland,
already with whole civilisations to support.

In a visceral collection, earth, water, skin and bone feature prominently, forming a landscape that is both of place and metaphor, as in 'Motherland - (v) Resting Place':

For I have returned to peat, granite, brine.
Soon the Atlantic will flood my veins,
my outline will have risen
as a livid scar of coastline
and the dust of me will have slipped below sand.
I shift to make myself comfortable
as the tide sucks me flesh-wards.

Full of lyrical rhythm and compelling imagery, this is a quietly assertive poetry that deserves to be heard."

Roselle Angwin, author of Looking for Icarus, Imago and Bardo:

"Whether she's writing of birth (real or metaphorical), of love or of journeys, Sharon's voice is an original one: tender, tough, imaginative. She doesn't flinch from the harsher aspects of being alive: the unborn child, breast cancer and loss all figure in her work. Here too are passionate, visceral poems that hold together both love and death. Many of her poems are rooted in her native Scotland, with the Hebrides a recurring motif. There's a mysterious Other in some of her work - one perhaps of and in the land, perhaps beyond it. Her work might be that elusive treasure brought to the surface in 'the net of the moon' trawling 'the sea of the night."

Bill Greenwell, author of Impossible Objects and Ringers:

"Sharon Black's poems are meditations on memory and family, on the way the present triggers images of the past. They are also gentle explorations of the skin and bones of bodies, and the oddities of landscape, deft and highly tactile: a series of deceptively quiet lullabies to the inner and outer world. Hidden among the gentle, teasing and tender images there are also suddenly disturbing moments, as in a poem about a terrorist bomber, which makes the reader want to go back and search the poems for the little inklings of pain as well as the sensory delights. This is a really absorbing first collection, with a constant enjoyment of the individual power of words."

Abegail Morley, author of How to Pour Madness Into a Teacup and Snow Child; poetry editor of The New Writer:

"If Sharon Black were a singer, she'd be a dramatic soprano with a wide and varied repertoire. This highly accomplished and polished collection tells many tales, not least that it is to be a woman in a strange world and a strange body. Here is a voice that needs to be heard and reheard; it simply gets better each time."

Adam Thorpe, poet, novelist, playwright:

"Sharon Black's poems are hugely impressive: sensual, gentle, poised between the 'storms of the heart' and the head's 'light rainfall', they have the secret, echoing force of subterranean streams."

Jayne Stanton, poet, blogs at Jayne Stanton POETRY:

"I purchased this first collection after enjoying Ms Black’s work in Poetry Kit‘s Caught in the Net 98 (featured poet showcase) and Michelle McGrane’s Peony Moon blog review.  Several poems in the collection have won or been shortlisted in competitions and poetry prizes.  Amongst my favourites: Sabotage, a poem about control, containment, the breaking of spirit.  Chilling, powerful.  Palomas (“doves”), the nickname given to Chilean miner Victor Zamora’s poems, sent to his wife in plastic capsules during the 69 days he was trapped underground in 2010.  Beautiful. These poems speak to my ear: great sounds, whether sub-vocalised or read aloud."