Clare Sawtell was born in Liverpool. She studied at University College London and the University of Limerick. She is a musician (cello and piano) and art historian, with a special interest in Irish stained glass. Since 2007 she has taught at Coole Music, Gort, Co Galway and lives near Kinvara on the edge of the Burren.

The Next Dance
Poems by Clare Sawtell
48 pp RRP €12.99
ISBN 9781097017339

"The poems of Clare Sawtell remind us of what poetry is or ought to be in the midst of the furious rattle of much contemporary Irish poetry. There are over-tones evident here of Mary Oliver and the late Kathleen Raine; some spiritual imp has blessed the best of them. Sawtell's style is deceptively easy and musical, remembering the lyric note in poetry, and some poems are quiet meditations on place and the renewing vitality of nature. Music is heard in the poems, a natural and unobtrusive sounding beneath the language. We should be grateful for them."
                                                       Fred Johnston

“The Next Dance is a confident, observant, delightful debut. Its best poems exhibit a particular sensibility and joy in language. It is a collection stitched through with memory and light and the minutiae of women’s lives. These are poems of surprise and delicacy that will stay with you. “
           Jo Slade