*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2019 T. S. ELIOT PRIZE*

Following her recent Odes, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet gives us a new collection of poems that sing of a woman’s intimate life and political conscience. The atom bomb, Breaking Bad, the cervix, Trayvon Martin, her mother’s return from the dead: the peerless Sharon Olds once again takes up subject matter that is both difficult and ordinary, elusive and everywhere.

Each aria is shaped by its unique melody and moral logic, as Olds stands centre stage to account for her own late romance and chance wisdom, and faces the tragic life of our nation and our planet. ‘I cannot say I did not ask / to be born,’ begins one aria, which considers how, with what actions, with what thirst, we each ask for a turn, and receive our portion on earth. Olds delivers these pieces with all the passion, anguish, and solo force that make a great performance, in the process enlarging the soul of her readers.

‘Olds is a supreme poet of the body; I’ll be reading her till I die’ Fiona Benson

Prizes

Short-listed for T S Eliot Prize 2020 (UK)

Sharon Olds goes where many poets would fear to tread and others not dream of treading. Like a curious child, she wanders past No Entry signs on to private land… Arias is a phenomenal achievement, the most moving collection of her career, the most open of books. -- Kate Kellaway * Observer, *Poetry Book of the Month* *
On my Christmas list? Sharon Olds’s Arias. Olds is a supreme poet of the body; I’ll be reading her till I die. -- Fiona Benson * Guardian, *Books of the Year* *
A generous collection… sexy, pained, conversational, always bringing the reader along for the ride. -- Tristram Fane Saunders * Telegraph *

Sharon Olds was born in San Francisco and educated at Stanford University and Columbia University. The winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the T. S. Eliot Prize for her 2012 collection, Stag's Leap, she is the author of twelve previous books of poetry and the winner of many other awards and honours. Olds teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at New York University and helped to found the NYU outreach programs, among them the writing workshop for residents of Isidor Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island, and for the veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. She lives in New York City.