Martha Sprackland
About
Martha Sprackland is a writer, editor, and translator from Merseyside.
Her debut collection of poems, Citadel (Pavilion, 2020) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Costa Poetry Award and the John Pollard International Poetry Prize; a new collection is forthcoming in 2027.
Martha teaches for Arvon, where she is also a Trustee. Martha’s translations from Spanish include poems by Ana Gorría (Ciclo, Debacle Ediciones, 2020), Gladys Mendía (PTC/Ledbury, 2020), Verónica Viola Fisher (Arc/Edge Hill, 2021), as well as short fiction by Sara Mesa (The White Review). In 2021 she was shortlisted for the Peirene–Stevns Translation Prize for fiction.
Her new translation of sixteenth-century Spanish mystic John of the Cross, Dark Night: Poems and Selected Prose, was published by Penguin Classics in 2026.
‘Citadel is keenly responsive to questions of place and displacement . . . Sprackland's painterly visions linger long in the memory.’ Guardian
‘. . . it gave me goosebumps . . . physical sensations leap out: the taste of a pepper, the ache of a tooth. Even the strangest descriptions have a rightness about them.’ Telegraph
‘I’ve returned over and again to this little work of perfect art: the language is so lithe, exact and rich; the painterly images such a joy; the sensibility so fine and rare.’ TLS
‘My favourite poetry book of the year: original, startling and exquisitely patterned.’ The White Review
