Be[yond]

Sarah’s second full-length poetry collection Be[yond] is published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press, June 2013.

Love & lust, betrayal & endurance, disturbance & peace, life & loss, nature & modern society, language & what lies in the shadows between lines delight and tantalise in Sarah’s latest work.

Following on from her prize-winning first collection, Be[yond] combines Sarah’s characteristic crafting and eye for detail, imagery and metaphor with a new, more probing, approach to language and poetics.

The three sections of this collection – Against Air and Water, Through the Ether and From Earth and Fire – guide readers past the beaches of Birmingham, through meditations on water, a dreamworld strangeness, mezzanine memories of France, defamiliarised cityscapes and gorse wildlands to the edges of everyday life, love and language.

In the words of other poets:

“Moving on from her very successful first collection, Sarah James shows that she is not afraid to take risks. Experimenting almost scientifically with form and language, ‘Be [yond] ‘ is innovative and adventurous and at the same time accessible and enjoyable.” – Jacqui Rowe

“An inventive voice emerging out of the entwined interstices of the domestic and the relational: precisely observed, embodied, thick with language.” – Scott Thurston

“Sarah James’s background in Linguistics makes for exceptional poetry. The rhythm is beautifully handled at a phonological level, and the imagery is striking. Here, though, the imagery is not just an adornment, it is drawn from various semiotic systems to convey hidden meaning, as if each poem were a text version on Sir Thomas Tresham’s Triangular Lodge.” – Alec Newman, Knives, Forks and Spoons Press editor

For a more detailled description of some of the inspiration and influences behind this collection, please click here.

A paypal link to purchase this collection, priced at £7, will follow shortly.

A short videotrailer featuring some ‘snippet’ lines from the collection can be viewed below. Enjoy!

Videopoem versions of several individual poems from the collection may be enjoyed on Sarah’s Be[yond] youtube playlist and audio versions can be found on soundcloud.

Into the Yell

In this, her first poetry collection, Sarah James penguin-flaps past the chopstick legs of flamingos to give the reader a heady dose of closely observed reality.

Into The Yell draws the reader along trails of squashed stars, tugged down to earth by tangles of seaweed girls. A grandmother grins with too many teeth, a boy collects clouds, and a mariner makes a deadly mistake. We travel with Sarah between Rouen and Haiti via Buxton, hospital waiting rooms and the Randolph Hotel, all watched over by Blake’s tiger, stripes alight.

Prepare to be amused, warmed, horrified, comforted, inspired – but watch out for beauty’s sting in the tail.

Want to buy the collection?

Please be careful to choose the correct payment option below for where you would like the book sent.

We take no responsibility for any customs costs/local taxes, where applicable these must be paid for by the recipient.
Delivery within 28 days but we will endeavour to make it as soon as possible, books usually being posted within two to three working days. Books pre ordered before publication on July 10, 2010 will dispatched as soon as possible after the launch on July 10.
We make no guarantees but those who would like a signed copy, should request this in the comments to seller box on paypal, along with who they would like it made to and a message of up to 200 characters.

If you live in Droitwich and would like to avoid paying p&p, please email Sarah on lifeislikeacherrytree@yahoo.com to arrange buying a copy with free delivery/collection.

STOCKISTS:

Into the Yell is now also available from:

Waterstones in Worcester – The Shambles, Worcester

Three Counties Bookshop in Ledbury High Street

Ledbury Books and Maps in Ledbury High Street

The endorsements:

“Sarah James’s first collection shows an imagination that can surprise and delight, as well as skill and confidence in her craft. I am already looking forward to seeing what she does next.”
(Angela France – poet and features editor of Iota)

“Sarah James’s poems are earthy, sensuous, often sexy, peopled by resonant characters, such as Shakespeare’s Juliet and a stiletto-heel-wearing Innuit. Always clear-eyed and compassionate, she explores the visceral realities of the female body; the pain of infertility and post-natal depression with language that pins down her subject with surgical precision.”

(Catherine Smith – award-winning poet and Poetry Book Society/Guardian ‘Next Generation’ poet – June 2004)

“Sarah James’ poems are full of colour, a life-affirming response  to both the domestic and the fantastic. Nevertheless, they  are aware of darker shades, the grimmer side of life, relationships and the imagination. This is a varied, thought- provoking and enjoyable first collection.”

(Jacqui Rowe – Poetry Society trustee, co-director of Flarestack Poets )

“Sarah James deciphers the world with a wise young eye; attentive to complexity, she makes her own sense of things – and expresses it in language that is often dramatic, and always engaging.”

(Meredith Andrea – co-director of Flarestack Poets)

OTHER REVIEWS

“Sarah James’ first collection is wonderfully mature and ambitious, charting a line across the moments in our shared lives that characterise and change us. No words are wasted…”

(Magdalena Ball, full review at Compulsive Reader at http://www.compulsivereader.com/html/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2521 )

From an ‘Iota 89’ Review of ‘Into the Yell’ by Lucy Tyler

“‘No Referral’ is one of many poems here which make ‘Into the Yell’ an assured debut,”

“The poetry then, like a person becomes cavernous; it contains an origami of imagistic amalgamations, linguistic experimentation and anecdotes shaded by absurd humour:”

“The journey each poem takes is far reaching, the points of reference extreme. We move from fairytale to pop-culture, to medieval historical, medical, toward the personal, relic object and precious memory. Indeed, the title, ‘Into the Yell’, is to do with discursiveness, the extremes and hallucinogenic excess of linguistic expression, but ultimately these poems still manage to be comprehensible and accessible despite their intriguing use of the surreal:”

“These poems are brave.”

“The hodgepodge of real and un-real, responsibilities and desires, memory and fantastical escapisms do speak pertinently not just about women, but about the way we must live our lives, the way we do live them – through stories, through metaphors, through abstractions and wilful escapisms.”

*****

Other reviews can be found at: http://www.writelink.co.uk/community/blogs.php?action=show_member_post&ownerID=421&post_id=8352
and at: http://www.writelink.co.uk/community/blogs/entry/Into-the-Yell-A-Poetry-Collection-by-Sarah-James