Sibyls and Others

First published in 1980, Sibyls and Others is now reissued in an updated edition with a new preface by the poet as part of the Poetry Book Society's Back in Print series. Praised by the New Statesman as "One of the best contemporary women poets in this country" Ruth Fainlight has also been described by John Bayley in the London Review of Books as: "In a tradition various enough to include Emily Dickinson, Mary Coleridge, Christina Rossetti and Charlotte Mew, her poetry gets on with itself, not self-absorbed but quite independent". Ruth Fainlight's poetry has grown more distinctive over the years, and she has often used the figure of the sibyl as an incarnation of female wisdom. Her fifteen books of poetry range from Cages (1966) to Moon Wheels (2006), and include The Region's Violence (1973), Sibyls and Others (1980), The Knot (1990), Selected Poems (1995) and Sugar-Paper Blue (1997), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Poetry Award. Ruth Fainlight has also published two collections of short stories, many translations and three librettos. She lives in London and is married to the writer Alan Sillitoe.