Poetry Bookshop

radical frog publishing

poetry bookshop

Poetry has always been a way for me to explore the quieter places within life – the moments of insight, stillness and transformation that often sit just beneath the surface. These books bring together words shaped by years of healing work, sound, ceremony and personal reflection.

Here you’ll find my published collections, each offering its own rhythm, atmosphere and way of seeing. Whether you’re drawn to poetry for comfort, curiosity or inspiration, this small bookshop is a place to pause, browse and discover the pieces that speak to you.

As new works are released, they’ll be added here so you can follow the unfolding journey.

available now

poetry by Frances

Songs of Renewal

Songs of Renewal by Frances Sarah Turner

Songs of Renewal was written in the heart of winter and addresses the issue of heartbreak and recovery. The poems are about how we meet loss in our lives and still have the courage to stand tall. They express anger, sadness, grief, resolution and wild joy in the context of nature and our beautiful Earth.

Frances Turner’s extraordinary collection of poems is divided into twelve chapters (months?) punctuated by relevant quotations from Chinese and, in particular, Daoist writings.

Every turn of the page reveals a different voice: the elegiac, the mystic, the occasional, the circumstantial, as well as narratives which we suspect to be autobiographical, and fairy tales presumably to be understood as allegories of our lives.
As she states in her postlude, these are “words that could not stay inside me” and the reader can rejoice that it all had to come out. I especially enjoyed phrases like “ the campanology of messy life” and “automata wrapped in bandages”.

Leave this collection lying around somewhere close by and dip in when the spirit moves you. You will not be disappointed.

Charles Medlam

Just to say how much I enjoyed your poetry. I resonated a lot – my partner of twelve years left earlier in the year. Your poems are deep and beautifully crafted.

Angela Voss

This is exactly what I needed – you’d know why if I told you what’s been happening to me!

Merlin Walberg

Songs of Renewal is a rich tapestry of poems and stories of a universal journey of life’s transitions. The collection offers resolution and insight into how suffering can be a gift which allows us to nurture the process of healing and connect to the Divine. It is as if Frances Turner has reawakened the ancient and mystical ritual of incantation yet with a fresh voice of beautifully written prose and poetry. Her words are helping me make sense of and heal from a recent trauma offering comfort and strength. I highly recommend this book to all.

Lisa Mounteer-Watson

Every single poem in Frances’ collection is an insightful jewel to be read and reread, encouraging us to open the door into a world where we can allow ourselves to be the still observer, to dance with joy to the eternal songs of renewal and also to feel our pain deeper while we transmute it into acceptance.

Her tales take us on a path into a hall of mirrors where we recognise our own stories.

Songs of Renewal inspire us to search for the healing light of love, so we can embrace the world as it is.

Ingrid Seifert

Songs of Fulfilment

Songs of Fulfilment by Frances Sarah Turner

My second collection of poetry and stories moves into spring and high summer, as nature re-emerges with full force. This collection of poems truly feels like a rite of passage into the next phase of my being. It is a time of coming into my own, of allowing tremendous creativity to flow through, and of flowering into the being that I am, without apology and without compromise, stepping into my own authority.

coming soon

upcoming titles

Songs of Forgiveness

Songs of Forgiveness by Frances Sarah Turner

As the days draw in, my poems move from the full flowering of summer into a time of letting go. This autumnal collection emphasises the dropping of externally imposed maps in favour of what is true for me, right here, right now, even if I don’t know at all where it is taking me. These are songs of forgiveness because, for me, forgiveness is a letting go. This forgiveness is primarily about forgiving myself, noticing the thoughts that I use against myself and others in so many ways, and dropping them. When we do this, it is extraordinary how beautiful life can become.

Songs of Forgiveness will be available in the summer of 2026.

by frances sarah turner

poems

When something shifts
And lifts the burden,
We turn a corner
That always was right there,
See that faint trace
Of grace, so sweetly gifted.

And when the pain,
Again begins to roar
Its self-perpetuating drama,
We simply laugh,
And let the music run
Abundantly.

For this song’s old,
A golden melody
But limited.
And sparkling through the openings
Between the notes
Are motes of wonder.

Songs of Renewal, July 2025

Connecting deep within,
The movement out flows naturally,
A flower opening
In its sweet time.

Finding our own light,
Community collects and manifests,
As woodland primroses
Carpet the banks.

Gathering together,
The fire calls us fiercely,
As flames leap up
And touch our hearts.

Each one a brilliant star,
Just here in constellation
For a moment,
In trust and truth.

The full moon blazes.

Songs of Fulfilment, February 2026

I coax the sound, vibrating in 3D,
Suspended between heaven and earth.

Listen, as the flumie reaches
In towards the pure unknown,
Delicacy catching notes in space
That grow and hum, their rhythm splitting
Into prisms rolling outward.

Listen, to be human teaches
Strokes that spin the atoms singing,
Catalysts of deep pulsating grace
That flow and run, their rhythm sitting
Easily within the pattern.

Listen, to the roomy breaches,
Silence that provokes true resonance,
While sound becomes a shimmering trace
To go and come, its rhythm fleeting
Aphorisms without boundary.

Suspended between heaven and earth
I coax the sound, and let vibration free.

Songs of Forgiveness, June 2026

Somehow, this time it’s different.
The fire is made and waiting,
And in a sudden dusk hush
Of absolute stillness,
It is time.

I call the winds silently
From where I am, sitting on the step.
Exactly
Where I am.

Then light the fire.
The paper flares. Will the kindling catch?
I watch it with detachment.
It will, or it will not.

It flames up one side,
Dancing and shimmering –
Will the whole thing join?

It will, or it will not.

And as I watch,
It drops gloriously into the centre,
Taking me with it,
As the fire takes hold from the inside out,
And roars its song to the universe.

Then breathes
In steady spreading

Before falling to ember.

One stick,
A lizard, black against red,
Held aloof.
The flames start to lick
Up and down its back,
Licking my spine,
Consuming.
Will these flames be enough?
They will, or they will not.

After an age
The lizard drops
with a sigh.
The fire is done.

And in the morning,
The lizard stick
has turned entirely to ash,
Just visible still, for a moment
In silvery outline.

Songs of Fulfilment, February 2026

Just this morning
The hollyhocks have buds!
Where did they come from,
Waiting to burst forth?

And there, full grown,
My neighbour’s son – a man!
All dressed up smartly
For his first school prom.

That moment comes,
Breathtakingly revealed,
When something launches
After years of growth,

And gifts itself
Into the universe,
A shining crystal
Formed in its own style,

That sings the heart,
Which for a while is shown
Its true connection
To the vast ‘I am’.

Songs of Fulfilment, February 2026

What we call illness
Is, infact, a clockwork response,
Inevitable in the circumstance of now,
Arising in the field,
To mitigate, perhaps,
Some unacceptable attacks
Of toxic poison,
Or judgmental thought,
Or casual violence we have hidden
With the force of abject terror.

Flagrant diseases
Storm in deluded acceptance
Through what we, in our apathy of mind,
Name civilisation,
Send out in vain
Pure information we ignore,
Of heart-sick pain,
Or crooked thinking,
Or situations bound
By the hopelessness of resignation.

At first quite soft,
A whisper that tickles the edges,
Then louder, nearer, till a shout
Emerges in the body,
Breaking out in symptoms!
Then we wage war,
With toxic bullets
Or pills of suppression,
Or sharp knives that remove
With the skill of dedication,

Not realising that we
Can clear the pond of smothering algae,
Can dredge the rivers of pollution,
Can help the seas
Refresh our stagnant waterways,
So rains fall gracefully upon our flesh.
For then the sparkling lake
Becomes our home,
We live in harmony
With this great clock of nature,
And our response, is love.

Songs of Forgiveness, June 2026

Today I read my songs
To you, my friends,
And you received me,
My words made softly luminous
By deep attention.

Today I laid my heart
In your good hands,
And you, my friends,
Returned to me one thousand-fold
Your own sweet souls.

Trust blossomed in our consonance,
We shared our truths,
For you, my friends
Are me, your issues mine, your gifts
My true expression.

Today I understood,
My friends, great joy
As I received you,
Each resonance unique, yet part
Of something whole.

Today I offered up
To you, my friends,
My smaller self,
And we became one entity
Of pure connection.

Songs of Fulfilment, February 2026

She cannot be trusted
To do what is good,
She breaks all the rules,
Will not do what she should.

But who is this one
Telling her what to do?
This tyrant who makes
Such a hullabaloo?

Exhorts her to do things
That actually just happened,
Pretending to knowledge
Of life rich and patterned.

But hang on, that first one
Who’s always unruly,
Who is she exactly?
Just look at her truly.

For both of these two
Are ephemeral shades,
That think they’re important,
And crave accolades.

And this push-me-pull-you
Might get a surprise
When you cut off its heads
And watch matters arise.

Songs of Fulfilment, February 2026

To breathe,
And yet to hold the breath
A little separated.
To eat,
And yet to hold the stomach
Parly closed.
To look,
And yet to hold the eyes
Somewhat away.

To keep it all at bay
In anxious shielding –
What is this need?

When I could ride the bellows,
Feel the rhythmic pulsing,
Life and death
Opening and closing
By itself.

When I could sing the flavour,
Feel the constant changing,
Plant and seed
Forever transforming
Without my help.

When I could dance the radiance,
Feel the steady cycling,
Light and dark
Rising and falling
On its own.

Why do we watch a made up play,
Thinking we know better,
When all around, lies richness?
Divided from us
By a heart beat, a hair’s breadth
Of awareness.

Songs of Renewal, July 2025

The moment when she dares to step forward
And sound her soul into the universe,
Revealing that which, with its own intent
Takes her and runs full tilt, to that new place
Beyond the known she never felt before.

To see that manifesting beautifully,
A flowering full of joy and pain and grief,
Touches my heart with some mysterious force
That lifts and opens, gifts me with a view
Of rolling fields and gentle sunlit hills.

Her sound is mine, her joy my joy, her pain
My suffering, as we together stand
In circle, join our hands and feel our strength,
Our softness and our truth. This day we dance
A song of deep communion and love.

Songs of Fulfilment, February 2026

And on this day
The choice is clear,
To wear the dragon lightly.
Take the time
And space and care,
For delicate new buds
To stretch their tiny wings,
And break my heart
With softness.

And in this way
All life is dear,
Its edges felt just slightly.
I can come
Into the sphere
Of infinite unknowns,
And let those shiny stars,
Wake up my heart
With sweetness.

Frances Sarah Turner, 22nd March 2025

We’re always told to drop into the root,
And feel the earth beneath our feet,
The bubbling spring of nourishment
That could perhaps fill out my stick-like legs
Bruised by neglect.

But tai ji is too hard and does not suit,
And pain shoots through the knees
As my blind striving makes it worse
And hardened muscles, lower limbs like pegs
Totter bereft.

Where is that holding tightness? In my hips?
Perhaps the pelvis is involved,
The quads and lower abdomen,
It stops the qi from flowing through the groin
With great effect.

Can I drop all this guarding? Brave the slips
And falters of true letting go,
To free the passageways below,
So that my sacred root and earth may join
In deep respect.

Songs of Forgiveness, June 2026

There’s something cooking underneath,
Reluctantly I wrench my thoughts
From work, from lists, let thinking cease,
And banish all those wretched oughts.

What is this thing? Is it a howl?
I feel a tension gathering.
Is sadness knocking? Or a growl
Of anger I am smothering?

Just let it out, express the truth
Of what within me wants to speak,
Give it free rein and let it loose,
Allow intensity to peak.

Then let it go, no holding on,
No going round and round to ride
In useless circles, go beyond
And sense what’s rising next inside.

For then my incoherent words,
My scribbled feelings wildly blown,
Start to express a wider curve
That takes me somewhere quite unknown.

Songs of Renewal, July 2025

A breathing structure of curving lines
That bend and pulse in sync
Around a living core.
A singing pattern of melodies,
Holding the fire of life
Lightly contained
Within the boundaries of the me, myself, I.

Flexible but non-negotiable,
A contract crafted on conception
Playing out its song.
And I can learn its pathways
Free the spaces in-between,
So that my secret hidden fire
Can shine its beauty.

If I deny its truth and look for more,
Or if I try to float off into endless light,
It calls me back,
A bonding beat of sweet insistence,
That this fire must flare in tune,
And that the richness of life right here on Earth
Is all I need.

Songs of Renewal, July 2025

For what is healing
But a sweet transmission of vibration?
An entrainment, lighting up the way,
So I can see, that I believe in my anxiety,
Or in my back pain, even my ME.

Since every cell renews
In hours, days, or months or years
What makes them so repeat the old?

It must be me.

If I can let my cells
Respond in full, to hear that new reverberation,
Perhaps I might release
These micro-packages of angst
I thought important, held so close,

And bring a change,
In hours, in days, or months or years, or even lifetimes,

To the figure of my being.

Songs of Renewal, July 2025