Sea Poetics – Patricia Helen Wooldridge
ISBN: 9781788640220
£8.99
Lyrical, personal, but always accessible, Sea Poetics is imbued with a deep feeling for the natural world. Wooldridge approaches poetry as though it is a painting, inspired by an experience of light or a moment that focuses attention, words are her canvass and the sea and sky her frequent themes, often leading to explorations of how individual experience relates to the macro scale of the universe. Her fresh images distil moments with skill and delicacy, pulling the reader into a shared emotional response. Skilful, evocative and compelling, Patricia Helen Wooldridge is an elegant debut voice.
Extract from ‘The Green Sea’
Of course, if I had the green sea to contemplate
every day for as long as I shall live, what mind-shift
would take place? How would I begin to compensate
for a time before this? To observe how the swell will lift
its glassy head and, in that instant, become unaware that a breath
is taken. There is little else now but the slack tide for inspection,
being lost in the waves’ giving way, no longer out of my depth.
Author biography
Patricia Helen Wooldridge lives in Hampshire and is inspired by walking, bird watching and working on her allotment. She studied English Literature at London University and has a doctorate in creative writing. In the past she has taught English in schools and more recently creative writing to undergraduate students. Her work has been placed in a variety of poetry competitions and has appeared in poetry journals and competition anthologies. Most notably she received a commendation in the National Poetry Competition 2013 and in 2016 she was awarded first prize in the Kent and Sussex Open Poetry Competition. Her pamphlet, Being won the Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Award in 2020.