"I wake up dreaming of libraries..."
Listen to my love letter on the RLF's latest podcast to two of Manchester's glorious libraries for National Libraries week: Manchester's Central Library and The Portico, it's privately-owned sister just a few minutes' walk away. rlf.org.uk/showcase/wa_ep #LoveLibraries #LibrariesWeek
'The first writing course I ever went on was actually a reading course. The library was my church as a child, but I'd never stopped to look at the page as a writer might'
TD: What gives micros their power? Language? Silence? Structure?
TH: As with any piece of great writing, this is hard to pin down, and I am an avoider of general pronouncements. I read around 1000 short and very short stories and poems, and non-fictions, every year, and I demand no less from a great piece of writing than to feel like I have been punched in the gut. Every piece that does that to me seems to do it in its own way, each writer makes it their own, which is the way it should be. I have a great love for a freshness of language, cliché turns me off, laziness of language will stop me in my tracks. Voice is what grabs me as a reader, the voice of a character or the narrator, in any piece of any length. The story itself, the plot, maybe be tiny and quiet, I never ask for enormous events to happen, there is great power in the small moments.
Hello! In the run-up to the publication of my debut poetry collection, Terms and Conditions (see the gorgeous cover on the left, by artist Hollie Chastain), I'm delighted to read you four new poems from the book - and to give you details about my launch events in Manchester (July 27th) and London (July 31st), do head to my website to find out more. Here is this month's audio - happy listening! 
Sarah Salway is Canterbury Laureate and Royal Literature Fund Fellow at the London School of Economics. You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book is her first poetry collection, and she is the author of three novels (Something Beginning With, Tell Me Everything and Getting the Picture) and a collection of short stories, Leading the Dance. Her poems have won significant prizes in competitions organised by Poetry London, the Essex Poetry Festival and The New Writer, and have appeared in publications including the Financial Times, The Virago Book of the Joy of Shopping, Mslexia, Pen International and Poetry London. Sarah is the Chair of the Kent & Sussex Poetry Society.
[s]ubtly angled glimpses of love, sex, marriage, which reveal them as they really are: matters of life and death. There's a quiet sizzling underneath the surface of these poems, which can make you smile and wince at the same time.
