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Sarah Wardle

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Calypso

Not only in my dreams have I visited an island,
carried far out to sea,
an Eden of extremes, where I dance naked on the sand
and laugh euphorically,

but also suffer storms, as threatening thunder reaches
nearer and still nearer,
a paradise of palms, which sees hell rain on its beaches
schizophrenic weather.

Here I have a sailcloth I filled with a shell, a pebble,
a ticket with a tear,
whose return half got lost, and a message in a bottle
to prove that I was there.

 

Sarah Wardle was born in 1969 and studied classics at Oxford.  After ‘four rollercoaster years’ of illness she is now a graduate of Sussex University.  She won the Geoffrey Dearmer Prize  in 1999 and was named the Poetry Review Young Poet of the Year.

poetrymagazines note: these poems are forthcoming in Sarah Wardle's first collection 'Fields Away' (Bloodaxe 2003)

Page(s) 71

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