Such a Sweet Singing: Poetry to Empower Every Woman

by Kirsty Gunn (Editor)

A beautiful collection of poems to nourish, inspire and change the women who read them.

This transformative collection of poems by female poets through the ages sing to us across the centuries. These poems span the worlds of desire, love and friendship, of responsibility, hardship and care, of family and friends and lovers. Their words empower us with strength and courage, fill us with verve and spirit, and inspire creativity and imagination.

Contemporary voices of Fiona Benson and Jane Yeh join the evocative imagery of Christina Rossetti, Anna Akhmatova and Emily Dickinson. Even the haunting voices of ancient Sappho, Venmaniputti and Li Qingzhao touch today's generation. Here are poems written by women, with women's lives in mind. As Gertrude Stein writes, 'such a sweet singing' is in the poetry that comes to us clear and lovely from out of the dark.

Read these poems aloud. Remember them. Share them.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Hardcover

Published April 7, 2022

About the author

Kirsty Gunn was born in 1960 in New Zealand and educated at Queen Margaret College and Victoria University, Wellington, and at Oxford, where she completed an M.Phil. After moving to London she worked as a freelance journalist.

Her fiction includes the acclaimed Rain (1994), the story of an adolescent girl and the break-up of her family, for which she won a London Arts Board Literature Award; The Keepsake (1997), the fragmented narrative of a young woman recalling painful memories; and Featherstone (2002), a story concerned with love in all its variety. Her short stories have been included in many anthologies including The Junky's Christmas and Other Yuletide Stories (1994) and The Faber Book of Contemporary Stories about Childhood (1997).

She is also author of This Place You Return To Is Home (1999), a collection of short stories, and in 2001 she was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary. Her latest books are The Boy and the Sea (2006), winner of the 2007 Sundial Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award; and 44 Things (2007), a book of personal reflections over the course of one year.

Kirsty Gunn lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.