Epithalamion

To golden Sardis Anaktoria will bring
her moonlight to outshine
                            its court of dancing stars;
to golden Sardis Anaktoria will bring
her loveliness, and leave us
                            blind in her eclipse.
Here autumn veins the air, as quartz lies in dark rock,
and swallows leave this chill
                            to seek their glowing land.
 

Containing all her published work along with over 70 uncollected poems, this is the definitive edition of a poet with a growing body of admirers. Clive Wilmer spoke of ‘the ghostly music’ of Sally Purcell’s poetry and described her first book as ‘a miracle of chaste perfection’. These qualities remained constant in her work. Often drawing on folklore and mediaeval sources, her poems are tense yet fluid in rhythm and diction, and alive with a sense of the numinous.