‘This is a poet who surely can do anything.’ Wendy Klein,The North, Issue 53
Anna is the author of Communion, (Wild Conversations Press), Struck, (Pindrop Press), Kissing the She Bear (Wild Conversations Press), Burne Jones and the Fox, (Indigo Dreams) Ghosting for Beginners, (Indigo Dreams), and Fever Few, (Indigo Dreams 2021).
She has had poems published in journals and anthologies, including Ambit, The North, New Walk Magazine, Amaryllis, Iota, Caduceus, Envoi, Allegro, Prole, A Parliament of Owls, Ink Sweat, Tears, Words from the Wild, Dear Reader, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Antropocene, Impspired, Nymph Writes, and As it Ought to Be.
Anna holds a Masters in Creative and Critical Writing from The University of Gloucestershire.
Eurydice in the Ruined House
2025
Anna Saunders reimagines myth not as escape but as confrontation, where the ruined house becomes many things at once: a fractured psyche, a scorched planet, a derelict home, a squat, the underworld itself. These poems trace the wreckage of passion, loss, and dislocation with fire, grace, and grit. Eurydice in the Ruined House is an existential meditation on voice and becoming, urging the reader to reconsider what it means to be, and to belong. Saunders summons and inhabits Eurydice not as a passive muse, but as an active subject, using the myth as a framework for descending into the underworld of the self.
The collection’s semantic and allegorical layering is richly multidimensional, with the central myth bridging opposites and dichotomies, masterfully illustrated in “Attributes of the Ruined House”, and making space for the emergent. The name Eurydice, from eurys (wide) and dike (justice), is charged here: a reckoning with gendered silencing and the systems that shape voice, place, and power.
This is a triumph of vision, craft, and execution.
Samatar ElmiFran Lock
The Prohibition of Touch (2022)
Feverfew (2021)
“Pertinent, nuanced, fiery, fast-paced and exhilarating, these poems possess a complex lyric palette. There is much magic here. A beautiful and necessary collection.”
Penelope Shuttle
“Anna Saunders’ poems are all fire, all earth, all sky; are creaturely; sing vivid, sing passionate, sing barefoot. They are not afraid of the dark – they draw down the moon and drink deep of it. Fever Few is extremely good medicine for whatever might ail you, so kick off your shoes and wade in.”
Helen Ivory
‘Rich with obsession, sensuousness and potency’
Ben Ray
‘These are plush and powerful poems.’
Richard Skinner
‘A powerful, pivotal and urgent collection. The poems in Fever Few will make even the deathless Gods jealous of mortal experience’.
Paul Deaton
‘…a consummate mastery of language and subject.’
Dawn Bauling
‘A poet at the top of her game – her finest collection to date.’
Indigo Dreams
Ghosting for Beginners (2018)
‘Haunted not simply by ghosts, but – richly – by myth, culture, and places both known and unknown, Anna Saunders’s new collection, a beautifully evocative read, invites us to see how complex, and how inter-related, the world we live in really is.’ Fiona Sampson
‘In Ghosting for Beginners, Anna Saunders reveals to us a haunted world. In these precise, witty and unnerving poems, Saunders tests the limits between this world and the next. She asks profound questions about the light we try to hold onto and the darkness we struggle to keep at bay.’ David Clarke
‘Anna Saunders’ is a modern myth-maker, unafraid of language and with her own rich and surprising vocabulary. She interrogates the good and bad, finding black humour and divine comedy in urban episodes of our collective, impatient and thirsty, often superficial, human comedy.’ Paul Stephenson
‘Superbly imagistic, calmly passionate, questioning yet surefooted, occasionally phantasmagoric but rooted firmly in lived experience, these are very fine poems indeed’. Rory Waterman
“These are poems which inhabit the shadowlands between reality and the imagined world – in which ghosts, folklore and myth are vividly present as versions of the things we experience in ‘real’ life. There is beauty to be found here and a clear-eyed willingness to remain open to wonder and to the possibilities of transcendence.” Katharine Towers
‘These are exquisite poems full of engaging characters and situations. Anna’s poems are infused with humour and poignancy and it is clear how much she loves language and revels in its use. These vivid poems are full of musicality.’ Alicia Stubbersfield
Burne Jones and the Fox (2016)
The fox of the title is a strong presence throughout this fine collection; sometimes a symbol, sometimes a shapeshifter, sometimes its earthy, physical self. Anna Saunders language is controlled and sensuous, and her strong images can startle just as deliciously as the bushy tail and amber eyes glimpsed at dusk.
Angela France
Struck (2014)
‘What stays with you at the end is not just the subjects or the myths the poems draw on – Danae, Zeus, Van Gogh, the figures from Chagall, compelling as those are, but the astonishingly original and fresh technique of a poet of quite remarkable gifts.’ Bernard O’Donoghue
‘The poems are passionate, acutely observed and strikingly original. They explore and discover original, surprising and truthful territories and dimensions of human feeling and experience, and are astoundingly alert to the complex and mysterious experience of being alive. A very fine, beautifully sustained collection by a gifted poet whose work is unfolding in remarkable directions.’ Nick Drake
‘The figures in Anna Saunders’ collection are struck by desire, betrayal, loss and grief. They inhabit a mythical landscape where women fall in love with trees, the dying are transformed into butterflies, and lovers are secretly serpents. Saunders’ metaphorical language is rich yet exact, offering us opulent, yet precisely crafted miniatures of human beings at the extremes of emotional experience. This is a bold and beautiful collection which deserves a wide readership.’ David Clarke
‘So dazzling and intoxicating are the images in this collection that one feels on reaching the last page that one could echo the final words of the poet’s father in ‘A Wind Fret’: The sun’s gone in ‘. James Knox Whittet
‘Anna Saunders’ collection Struck is aptly named. I was struck by the balance between meditative and sensual, accepting and angry, but always beautifully observed poems. Grief, desire, mythology and modernity all balance in the energy with which she uses image, line music and breath. The voice is achieved and authentic, and builds beautifully across the different moods and themes of this collection. The work in Struck extends and deepens the achievement of her previous collection Communion. This is a poet going from strength to strength.‘ Nigel McLoughlin, Professor of Creativity & Poetics, University of Gloucestershire
Communion (2010)
‘Anna Saunders’ meditative poems reflect and shimmer like the light in Suze Adams’ wonderful photographs. There is a delicate interplay between the poems and pictures, a shared stillness.’
Cliff Yates
‘Moving poems of flesh and spirit from ‘ears finely tuned’ match photographs of a ravishing clarity.‘
Alison Brackenbury
Kissing the She Bear