Fivestones
Fivestones was published by Lapwing Publications, in 2022.
‘I’m not sure where
or when it was,
but know at the time
we were playing cobs –
‘This compelling unique collection is profoundly rooted in nature and place. Sampson’s engagement with Devon’s history, landscape and culture runs deep, and these poems are wonderfully informed by geographic specifics and personal recollection. Sampson’s language is precise, lyrical and uplifting, drawing especially on women ancestors and poets … Fivestones shimmers with ‘past’s living myth’, its resurgent presences overlaying our own in a palimpsest of vital and mysterious knowledge.'(Sarah Law)
‘…While this collection opens with what may be a homage to Frances Horovitz and elsewhere cites other women poets including H.D., Eavan Boland and Sylvia Plath, these neatly crafted poems recall Gary Snyder in the primacy of place, the wild plants and creatures that help define place, and the writer’s place among them – with southwest England and southwest Scotland rather than the Pacific USA, here providing the vital bedrock. The conjured spaces are rocky, littoral, windswept, non-urban, their named inhabitants typically rook, heron, pipit and other winged things, the stones themselves also named, made specific, maybe standing. The rocks and the words go deep into the earth.'(Aidan Semmens)
‘This collection is a tour-de-force on the history of Devon and by extension beyond…’ (Dennis Greig)
Fivestones is available from the author. See Contact page.
It Was When It Was When It Was
It Was When It Was When It Was, was published by Dempsey and Windle, in 2018.
‘When she was young
her poems would simply run
free-as-her-old-English-puppy’s
headlong sprint …’ Jill’s Poem
“It’s not difficult to hear the music we recognise as English Poetry in Julie Sampson’s family chronicle… memory’s landscapes & vice-versa, poignant & determinedly present.”(Kris Hemensley)
“These are not only poems of seductive and succulent detail. As Julie Sampson makes clear early in the collection, her project is to show the fruits of being fully present in our lives, in our family stories. To pay the world its due attention, to miss as little as possible, is to build the capacity to someday retrieve and ‘refold enigmas layering our life’. Here are the results – the vivid, moving triumphs of the poems.”(Alasdair Paterson)
This book is available from the author. See Contact page.
Tessitura
Tessitura was published by Shearsman Books, in 2013 .
This first poetry collection brings together a range of poems, several inspired by landscapes of the South-West, alongside a sustained sequence engaging with the lives and writing of women associated with Devon. The collection draws together work written over an extended period, allowing different strands of practice to coexist within a single volume.
Tessitura is available from the publisher. A PDF sampler is available, the book may be purchased directly from other booksellers or directly from the author. See Contact page.
Mary Lady Chudleigh: Selected Poems (Editor)
Sampson was invited by the editor of Shearsman Books to edit the paperback edition of Selected Poems of Mary Lady Chudleigh, published in the Shearsman Classics series. Lady Chudleigh was a significant seventeenth-century Devon poet and an important proto-feminist voice, associated with the literary culture of her time and a contemporary of John Dryden.
Chudleigh’s work continues to resonate with modern readers for its intellectual independence and clarity of expression. This volume remains the only selection of Chudleigh’s poetry currently available in paperback.
Mary Lady Chudleigh: Selected Poems is available from the publisher, a sampler PDF is available and copies of the book purchased directly from other booksellers, or directly from the author. See Contact page.
Julie Sampson 