Beware Falling Tortoises

A falling tortoise is a bizarre way to meet one's end, but it is typical of Sheenagh Pugh's wry humour that it finds a place in her poetry. The more humorous aspects of mortality and human frailty receive the same alert consideration as sombre subjects such as dictatorship, torture, the Dieppe raid and pollution. Whether describing the significance of the maximum break in snooker or exploring the mind of a Nazi, Sheenagh Pugh's individual voice resonates throughout her finely crafted poetry. "Sheenagh Pugh's work's accessibility is a feature of the clarity and inevitability with which she can pursue intuitions into territories of luminous significance." Poetry Review "Sheenagh Pugh is a remarkable, sometimes brilliant poet. Her great gifts are accessibility, wit, subtle rhyme schemes and the power to illuminate half-forgotten corners of history" Merryn Williams "... among the top two or three poets of her generation writing English poetry in Wales" Poetry Wales Sheenagh Pugh is known to thousands of poetry readers for 'Sometimes', her much anthologised 'poem on the underground' and for her Selected Poems, a set text in schools. She currently lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan, and has won numerous prizes for her work, including the Babel Prize for translation and the ACW Book of the Year in 2000.