Poet, author

Sally Festing’s poetry has followed ten years of journalism, radio plays, academic studies, Penguin biographies of Gertrude Jekyll, Barbara Hepworth and varied non-fiction books. She has won prizes and featured in more than 40 different magazines, in print and online:

Acumen, Agenda, Ambit, Assent, Critical Quarterly, Coffee House, Dream Catcher, Envoi, Equinox, Fenland Poetry Journal, Frogmore, Ghost Furniture Catalogue, Ink Sweat and Tears, Interpreter's House, Iota, London Grip, Links, LUPO, Magma, MaryEvans website. New Welsh Review, The North, Obsessed with Pipework, Orbis, Outposts, The New Statesman, The Poets’ Republic, Poetry Nottingham, Poetry Review, Seam, The Shop, Smith's Knoll, SMOKE, Snakeskin, The Spectator, Stand, Staple, The Times, Under the Radar, The Wolf, Wild Court, Wordplay, “14”.

Her new collection, Meeting Places, (Mica Press), will be launched in Norwich’s Maddermarket Bar on Thursday, 22 May 2025, 6-8.00 pm in Spring 2025. And again in the Boathouse, Burnham Overy Staithe, Saturday 31 May, 5-7.30 pm.

Paul Muldoon chose her opening poem in Meeting Places, ‘The Swim’, as a winner in the Open category in the Guernsey International Poetry Competition 2024.

Meeting Places also includes ‘Echoes’ from Sally’s KFS pamphlet, White Queen’s Last Stand. Sally has another full collection and five pamphlets including the much-loved Font, a tribute to the Norman font in St Mary’s Church, Burnham Deepdale.

Recently featured work includes:

‘The Endurance of Chairs’

Imagine the chain of love behind curved oak arms
and backs; how wood first slipped beneath the joiner’s
hands as he spat and whistled a tune,

overalls, cloth cap. How he steamed to bend
his smoker’s bows, shavings thick as willow leaves,
air choked with dust (an early death).

We’ve sat on them and been happy.
We’ve stood on them to hang glitter,
settledthe tabby on each seat at night.

We’ve gentrified them in plum-hued suede.
They’ve moved with us, seen our children leave,
will probably honour our end. 

From W.N. Herbert’s Ghost Furniture Catalogue web

Echoes

I remember
early morning, dawn coming up
under dusky skies, beachcombing,
foraging for wood
                               when marram stripped
my legs and stung. The hungry miles,
three of us running,
when toads sang and sun blinded our eyes.

I remember long afternoons
when heat shimmered
off the dunes, and hoppers gathered
in my hair, and a fox lay
                                    decomposing
in the sandhills beside its lair.

I remember beauty in wreckage –
waves breaking in a million endings
and spray making trinkets of glass.

I remember evenings
when a muted sun gave way to stars,
when I lived outside, cried like a night owl,
when bats’ echolocation bounced the air,

and the sky, a darkish olive-green,

made an oversized chessboard of marsh
and sand that focused my mind
when stars came out.
When shadows closed in.

from Sally’s KFS pamphlet, White Queen’s Last Stand.