Poems: Sheila Wingfield

Sheila Wingfield is a poet whose clarity of voice and original eye for detail offers readers fresh insight into life in the middle decades of the 20th century. Born in the south of England in 1906 of an Irish mother and an English father, she had a privileged upbringing in London before marrying the Hon. Mervyn Patrick Wingfield in 1932 and moving to Ireland, where the couple would later inherit the Powerscourt Estate, County Wicklow.

Published in 1938, Wingfield’s first volume of poems display her enduring interest in classical literature, brought to life in vivid and precise language. Wingfield’s early work attracted considerable praise from its many reviewers and established her as a figure of promise among the younger generation of poets. Though she later became isolated from the literary scene, Wingfield remained a poet of cosmopolitan perspectives, endlessly curious about other cultures and fascinated by the fields of history and science.

The poems in this volume show Wingfield’s style at its most accomplished and memorable, while the introductory essay highlights the significant contribution she made to the history of Irish poetry of the twentieth century.