In the Supplementary Garden: New and Selected Poems

Editor Robert McLean describes In the supplementary garden as a generous harvest from Bridge's five previous books of poetry including a number of the lyric sequences at which she especially excels along with a suite of new poems which for me contains some of her finest work. Janet Hughes in her introductory essay writes: "The five volumes represented in this selection amount to a substantial oeuvre and the new poems demonstrate that the veins she has mined are far from worked out. All the poems are underpinned by scholarship in English and classical Chinese literature and the Classical tradition. It is deployed lightly but this is still sophisticated uncompromising poetry demanding an agile response." Awarding the 2015 Sarah Broom Poetry Prize to Diana Bridge the chief judge Irish poet Vona Groarke described her work as "possibly amongst the best being written anywhere right now--for the arresting composure of the poems for their reach and depth for their carefully-wrought thought and language for the beauty of their phrasing for how they are both intellectually astute and also sensual and accessible for the way they catch you up short and make you wonder with a delightful wonder just how it is they have brought you to where they have brought you; for their wit and style and yes their seriousness."