Photo credit David Green

Sarah Barnsley grew up in the Midlands where her dad was a firefighter. She was a winner in the Poetry Society Members’ Poems Competition (Spring 2021, Autumn 2018), shortlisted (2018) and longlisted (2020) in the Live Canon Poetry Competition, shortlisted in the Bridport Prize (2018, 2010) and joint runner-up in the Poetry School/Pighog Pamphlet Competition (2014).

Sarah’s first full collection, The Thoughts, was published by Smith|Doorstop in January 2022.

Magazine credits include Antiphon, Brittle Star, Envoi, Finished Creatures, The Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, Magma, Mslexia, Obsessed with Pipework, Orbis, Poetry News, Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Shearsman, The Stinging Fly, Tears in the Fence, Under the Radar and The White Review.

Other publications include a pamphlet, The Fire Station (Telltale Press, 2015), co-editorship (with Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny) of Truths: A Telltale Press Anthology (Telltale Press, 2018) and a selection of literary criticism, including Mary Barnard, American Imagist (SUNY Press, 2013) and editorship of Mary Barnard’s Complete Poems (forthcoming). Sarah is Contributing Editor to The Understory Conversation.

Sarah is Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she specialises in poetry and poetics, as well as directs distance-learning provision in English. Sarah lives in Hove.

Read some of Sarah’s poems here.

To find out about readings and festival appearances go here.

For a list of Sarah’s publications, and how to contact her, go here.