Sharon Olds’ fear and self-loathing

Since the publication of her debut collection, Satan Says in 1980, which was awarded the inaugural San Francisco Poetry Center Award, Sharon Olds has become a prominent – and controversial – voice in American poetry.

Olds’ work has been given many unflattering adjectives from her harshest critics: self-indulgent, sensationalist, solipsistic, and pornographic, to name a few.

While her confessional, and overtly autobiographical style, may not be to every critics’ taste, Olds’ candid voice, describing her own troubled childhood; the human body; and a world which very often displays fear, violence, love and kindness, in equal measure, has seen her become one of the most widely read poets of her generation.

Her collection, The Dead and the Living (1984) sold more than 50,000 copies, becoming a best selling volume. The book also won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Olds’ latest book of poems, Stag’s Leap, has been shortlisted for the 2012 T.S. Eliot Prize – her third nomination for this award to date.