Collected Poems, Volume 1

Frances Presley was born in Derbyshire, grew up in Lincolnshire and Somerset, and lives in north London. She studied at the universities of East Anglia and Sussex, and later worked on community development and anti-racism projects, as well as at the Poetry Library. She has pursued collaborations with artists and other poets, such as Irma Irsara, Elizabeth James, Peterjon Skelt and Tilla Brading. She has written various essays and reviews, especially on innovative British women poets. Her work is included in many anthologies, including Infinite Difference: Other Poetries by UK Women Poets (edited Carrie Etter, Shearsman, 2010), and A Ground Aslant - Radical Landscape Poetry (edited Harriet Tarlo, Shearsman, 2011). Shearsman Books publish her Collected Poems in two volumes in 2022 to mark her birthday.

The first volume of Frances Presley's Collected Poems, 1973 to 2004, provides an important overview of her earlier life and poetic development. She experiments with modern and postmodern poetry and prose, projects and collaborations, sometimes associated with the new British poetry. Her feminism and political commitment are sharply defined, alongside a growing concern for ecology. It includes The Sex of Art, Hula Hoop, Linocut and Somerset Letters, as well as her collaborations, with artist Irma Irsara, on women's clothing, Automatic Cross Stitch, and with poet Elizabeth James, Neitherthe One nor the Other. It supersedes and expands her selected poems, Paravane (2004) and Myne (2006).


'Frances Presley is a splendid and authentic poet whose work shines with exact edge and luminous presence of what she notices and chooses to translate into language' -Kathleen Fraser


'Frances Presley's writing engages with serious political concerns underscored with deeply personal experience. e world 'out there' of unrest, injustice, and conflict is not something to be compartmentalised but co-exists with the domestic on equal terms. A summer flower or childhood memory in Somerset blossoms next to the exploding horrors of Semtex. She is not a poet to shy away from life but pushes language into its face until it yelps'. -Geraldine Monk


'Presley's poems are minesweepers working below the surface to explode the breezy assumptions of Thatcherist consumer capitalism, or to explore what has already caved in'. -Meredith Quatermain