Sleeping Keys

by Jean Sprackland

In her first collection since the Costa-winning Tilt, Jean Sprackland looks back at endings and the end of a life, or of a marriage; old homes lived in and left, new homes discovered. There are poems that speak of the paralysis and bewilderment of knowing something is over, and of the strangely significant, almost votive nature of the things that are left the biscuit tin ‘of old keys, decommissioned and sleeping’, the empty room fading ‘to a tinnitus of dust and dead wasps’.This is a book of transitions – domestic and emotional – and it explores how the experience of change is painful, disorientating, even catastrophic, but also profoundly necessary and revelatory. Change brings with it the hope that love can be recovered out of the ruins; change, in fact, is a creative, healing force that shows us we have been living among ruins – that even in the face of grief and loss there are ‘spectral futures / we must stride the ditch to reach’. Full of exact, vivid, clear-eyed observation of a world of failure and flux, Sleeping Keys also illuminates a future world beyond. For every object left emptied of significance, bereft, Jean Sprackland shows us another that is charged and radiant with possibility – the possibility of miracles.

Genres: Poetry

Kindle Edition

First published September 5, 2013

About the author

Jean Sprackland is a poet and writer. She is the winner of the Costa Poetry Award in 2008, and the Portico Prize for Non-Fiction in 2012. Her books have also been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the TS Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Award.

Jean is Reader in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

She is a trustee of the Poetry Archive, the world’s premier online collection of recordings of poets reading their work.

Jean has worked as a consultant and project manager for organisations involved with literature and education. She has held residencies in schools and universities, and is a tutor for the Arvon Foundation.

She lives in London.

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. It is a deceptively easy read – I read it the first time virtually in one sitting. The language feels light and airy – but there is something compelling and haunting about these poems. The poems are often domestic in theme (which to be honest I am not always keen on) but Sprackland pulls it off with panache – bringing a sense of wistfulness (or loneliness) and other worldliness to subject matter that other poets would balk at – for example the biscuit tin and keys of the title poem. This is a book that I keep coming back to. It is a book about memory(s), things forgotten, and the various ways in which we inhabit our lives, but it doesn’t feel old hat or clichéd. My personal favourite of the collection was Opening a Chimney – where Sprackland compares the chimney to “a stopped throat” and the chimney slowly wakes up to the world around it. Beautiful.

[Victoria Grigg · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first poem got under my skin. She has a light touch, but the poems resonate.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really rather lovely. I've neglected poetry for a few years now so I was worried that I wouldn't understand it so readily. I was wrong. Sprackland writes beautifully, elevating the everyday and even providing household clutter with a sense of elegance.

[Jennifer Brumby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Borrowed from the library, renewed after three weeks. In other words the author creates lightly crafted, significant poems which are worth reading, re-reading and thinking about. Carefully chosen words from a wide vocabulary, and topics and perceptions which are relevant today.

[SallyandBooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find poetry books hard to review like short stories collections. Some I liked, some I just read because they were the next one on the page and some I loved.

Out shopping in Bath I went to Waterstones and stumbled upon their sale section (could have bought lots more than I actually did) and thought not only did this book look good but it sounded good as well.

On the whole I thought this poetry book was brilliant (but then I haven't read much poetry) and definitely one I shall be returning to in the near future.