Click here to access the historic recordings of Jean Sprackland as well as a brief biography of this author.

Jean Sprackland (b. 1962) is the author of two books of poems and a collection of short stories, and has been short listed for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Whitbread Prize and the T. S. Eliot prize. She was chosen as a Next Generation Poet in 2004. There is an attention through Sprackland's work to the spark of mystery left in what we have allowed to seem domestic or ordinary.

Her recording was made on 23 August 2005 at The Audio Workshop, London and was produced by Richard Carrington. From this page, you can hear the voice of Jean Sprackland reading five of her poems: "Note from the Outside," "Hard Water," "Reading Leaves," "Holy," and "Ice on the Beach."

Poetry Archive exists to help make poetry accessible, relevant and enjoyable to a wide audience. It came into being as a result of a meeting, in a recording studio, between Andrew Motion, soon after he became U.K. Poet Laureate in 1999, and the recording producer, Richard Carrington. They agreed about how enjoyable and illuminating it is to hear poets reading their work and about how regrettable it was that, even in the recent past, many important poets had not been properly recorded.

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