Janet Sutherland
Photo of the author by
Katie Vandyck
Katie Vandyck
Born in Salisbury in 1957 and growing up on a
dairy farm, Janet Sutherland studied at Cardiff and Essex Universities and has an MA in American poetry. After twenty years living and working in East London she moved to Lewes in 2001 with her partner and son. Her first collection, Burning the Heartwood, was published by Shearsman in 2006. Her second collection, Hangman's Acre is published by Shearsman in 2009.
dairy farm, Janet Sutherland studied at Cardiff and Essex Universities and has an MA in American poetry. After twenty years living and working in East London she moved to Lewes in 2001 with her partner and son. Her first collection, Burning the Heartwood, was published by Shearsman in 2006. Her second collection, Hangman's Acre is published by Shearsman in 2009.
"Janet Sutherland prefers a pared-back, uncluttered, free verse for the poems in Hangman’s Acre. The understated tones and hewn forms create a careful performance ..... she is a gifted and observant nature writer .....There are many delicacies in such an approach: deftness of image, delays of space. Elizabeth Bishop’s attentiveness of voice hangs over this whole collection but the influence is one of tone. I can’t help but admire the fact that this poet can yield such music, movement and scent from a rebounding flowerhead and a slowed-down spondee-sprung myrtle."
(David Morley in Poetry Review Volume 100:1 Spring 2010)
"With her rigorous commitment to absolute clarity and precision, Janet Sutherland's poems are pared to the bone, visionary, untainted by sentiment but always fully compassionate - suffused with a quiet, deeply felt spirituality. She never shirks the poet's obligation to describe what she sees and to explore the realities of rural life and death. She is sureley one of our most accomplished nature poets, and we should cherish her courage and her gifts"
(Catherine Smith)
"Brief, eloquent lines speak of a personal world of growing things, gardens, women, love, endurance. Her poems are questioning, tender, guarded"
(Judith Kazantsis in Poetry Review)
(David Morley in Poetry Review Volume 100:1 Spring 2010)
"With her rigorous commitment to absolute clarity and precision, Janet Sutherland's poems are pared to the bone, visionary, untainted by sentiment but always fully compassionate - suffused with a quiet, deeply felt spirituality. She never shirks the poet's obligation to describe what she sees and to explore the realities of rural life and death. She is sureley one of our most accomplished nature poets, and we should cherish her courage and her gifts"
(Catherine Smith)
"Brief, eloquent lines speak of a personal world of growing things, gardens, women, love, endurance. Her poems are questioning, tender, guarded"
(Judith Kazantsis in Poetry Review)
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