As a one-time fine-arts journalist, Linda Saunders found an early spur to poetry in a wish for a less analytic language in which to speak about art. As Philip Gross has written, 'she applies words to subtle experiences as a painter might use paint'. A keen bird watcher, she is fascinated by fleeting visual events, as well as by feelings glimpsed 'sideways', 'between the visible and invisible', as one poem has it. For her, 'writing is a way of exploring and listening to both the external and the inner world, to others and myself. The sounds and resonances of words are vital to me, and a means of discovering elusive feelings and experiences.' Her poems have been published in many magazines including Agenda, Acumen, Poetry Review, Poetry Ireland, Poetry Wales, The North, The Rialto, The Warwick Review; and in a number of anthologies, including New Women Poets (Bloodaxe) and The Tree Line (Worple Press).Her first full-length collection was short-listed for the Jerwood Aldeburgh Prize, and commended as 'gently passionate poems whose luminous apprehension of the natural world and of subtle human gestures is tempered by a fine poetic wit, a sharp eye and a keen ear.'She was also shortlisted for the BP Arts Journalist of the Year Award.
