Lesley Saunders

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Lesley Saunders worked in education all her professional life; she is now a visiting professor at UCL Institute of Education. Lesley is also a much-published poet; her most recent poetry collections are This Thing of Blood & Love (Two Rivers Press, 2022) and, with Rebecca Swainston, Days of Wonder (Hippocrates Press, 2021), a record of the first year of the Covid pandemic. Her translations – including the poem that won the 2016 Stephen Spender award – of renowned Portuguese poet Maria Teresa Horta were published as Point of Honour (Two Rivers Press, 2019). More recently, Lesley has translated many poems by Maria Azenha for the website Poesia, Vim Buscar-te and for the journal Il Pietrisco. Lesley is a member of the RHOME research group at Lison University, and in the process of writing and presenting a series of papers on the connectivity between poetry and dementia.