Sarah Wardle was born in London in 1969, and educated at
Cheltenham Ladies' College. She studied
Classics at
Lincoln College, Oxford, and English at
Sussex University. She was President of
Oxford University Conservative Association during
Trinity term, 1989. In 1999, she won the
Geoffrey Dearmer Memorial Prize and
Poetry Review’s new poet of the year award. Her first collection of poetry,
Fields Away, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2003, and was shortlisted for the
Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection). Her poems have been published in, among others,
The Evening Standard,
The Guardian,
The Herald (Glasgow),
The Independent,
The Independent on Sunday,
The London Magazine,
New Welsh Review,
Poetry Review,
The Times Higher Education Supplement and
The Times Literary Supplement, as well as in many anthologies. A number of them have also been broadcast on radio and television. Wardle has written articles and reviews for magazines and newspapers such as Poetry Review, Writing in Education, the Times Higher Education Supplement, the Times Literary Supplement and
The Observer. She was also Poet in Residence for
Tottenham Hotspur F.C. Her second poetry collection, SCORE! (published by Bloodaxe Books in 2005), included some of the poems she broadcast while poet-in-residence for the club, as well as the script of a film-poem, ‘X: A Poetry Political Broadcast’. Her third collection,
A Knowable World, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2009. Sarah Wardle is a lecturer in poetry at
Middlesex University and lives in London. She is a
Royal Literary Fund Fellow at
Royal Holloway and a
FRSA. ==Critical reaction==