Susan Bullock Poetry

Celebrating an American Poet

Susan Bullock (1959-2009) was born in Somerville, New Jersey and graduated Wellesley College in 1981. At Wellesley she was the recipient of a grant from the Four Oaks Foundation, was named a Wellesley Scholar, and was awarded a fellowship from the Thomas Watson Foundation. Her poetry has appeared in Persephone, Harvard Review, Princeton Theological Review, Literary Imagination, The London Magazine, English, and Stand, among others. Her Selected Poems was published by Ars Interpres in 2006.

Of it David Ferry wrote
“…Susan Bullock shows that she is remarkably talented,
in eloquent poems that pursue their themes so intently,
and with such gathering power…“

The Young Poet Susan just before her 17th birthday.

Reader, Hold Me Gently

A new volume of Susan’s later poetry was published in late 2011, and is now available for purchase. Reader, Hold Me Gently is a selection of her work from 2007 to three days before her death in February 2009. These final poems, many in sonnet form, explore the themes of wonder at nature, emotional longing and spiritual discovery, and visceral response to landscape familiar to readers of her earlier Selected Poems. In Reader, Hold Me Gently, these themes are extended and refined to stunning effect.

A Foreword and critical appreciation by literary critic and scholar Sir Christopher Ricks rounds out and illumines this splendid collection. He praises the poems of Reader, Hold Me Gently as“…as touching and moving as they are because they are simply—not to be mistaken for easily—at one with her nature and convictions…” and “…the poems of Susan Bullock…at the very moments of holding fast to their own beliefs hold out an awareness that in both spiritual and moral matters there truly is more than one code in the world.”

To purchase Reader, Hold Me Gently via secure PayPal send a request to Deborah via the contact page.

 Softcover, perfect bound,
6″ x 9″, 36 pages,
28 poems.
Foreword by Christopher Ricks.
$24.90 
includes shipping and handling.