Jean Sprackland is the author of two books of poetry and a collection of short stories. Her book Hard Water was shortlisted for both the T S Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award 2004.

Jean was born in Burton-on-Trent in 1962, and now lives in Southport. Her third collection of poems is due to be published by Cape in 2007.


POETRY
Hard Water (Cape, 2003)
Though firmly rooted in the domestic, natural world, Jean Sprackland’s poems are thrilling excursions into the lives that we live alongside our everyday ones: the lives we are aware of in dreams, in grief, in love. She shows us the vertigo and vulnerability of human experience with great clarity and precision, tenderness and care. These are vivid poems full of light and weather and water: a flooded forest, acid rain, an inland tidal wave, an ocean of broken glass; jellyfish washed up on the beach ‘lay like saints/unharvested, luminous’.

“This second collection establishes Jean Sprackland as a definite new talent. The poems in Hard Water have the exhilarating quality of freshness and truth: poems of memory and place, religion and childhood, captured with relish in a textured and physical language. Added to this are a gift for the colloquial and a subtle, sexy humour. This is a hugely enjoyable collection by a poet writing with clear gusto and authority. Buy it – and then buy it for a friend.”
Carol Ann Duffy

Tattoos for Mothers Day (Spike, 1997)
“A fine and moving book, a walk along the cliff edge… not comfortable but somehow comforting in the end.”
Adrian Mitchell


SHORT STORIES
Ellipsis (Comma, 2005)
Sprackland's stories combine narrative energy with affecting compassion for her troubled characters.”
Nicholas Royle, Time Out


NON FICTION (with Mandy Coe)
Our thoughts are bees: Writers Working with Schools (Wordplay Press, 2005)

Titles by Jean Sprackland

Ellipsis 1

Featuring: Jean Sprackland, Sean O'Brien & Tim Cooke

The first in a new series of books celebrating the 'short story sequence' - that interlocking daisy-chain of narrative produced when stories knit together to form a continuum of character or theme. Taking its leaf from the Penguin Modern Poets series, each book will feature three authors, offering sequences of five or six stories each. Some of those featured will be established authors, others previously unpublished writers. Part 1 of the series features the first collected fiction of two of the UK's most important poets, Sean O'Brien and Jean Sprackland, alongside new writer Tim Cooke.

"Sprackland's stories combine narrative energy with affecting compassion for her troubled characters. she has now arrived as a short story writer. Tim Cooke is another extremely exciting author.bold.and skilled." Time Out

List Price £7.95
Price £5.00

Details

• ISBN 0-9548280-2-X
• Publisher Comma Press
• Genre Short Fiction
• Extent 176pp