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Each poet we record has their own full page in the Archive. Here we can tell you about their writing life, biographies, histories, awards and more...

263 poets

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Poet

Lorna Goodison is one of the finest Caribbean poets of her generation and lauded as such by Kwame Dawes in the Caribbean Writer: “Superlatives glint all over commentary on Lorna Goodison’s work… she is now one of the greatest!” Goodison…

Poet

5 poems available

Through direct, colloquial language and often intense imagery, Catherine Smith invites the reader into a world at once familiar and unsettling. Her poems display a gift for teasing significance from relatable personal experience: vivid dreams of secondary school exams; the…

Poet

Sylvia Townsend Warner

B. 1893 D. 1978

1 poem available

Sylvia Townsend Warner [1893-1978] is best known today as a groundbreaking feminist and lesbian writer who championed the cause of the outsider in novels such as Lolly Willowes. However, this is only one aspect of a writer whose literary career…

Poet

5 poems available

Measured, musical and understated, Jacob Polley’s poems delve deep into the elemental, the eerie and the unstable. Whether conjuring a crow from the Biblical tale of Cain’s murder of Abel, his gloves “set alight” and “blackened into life”, or simply…

Poet

Jane Duran

B. 1944

8 poems available

Jane Duran (b. 1944) is a writer whose work is often preoccupied with memory and exile. Born in Cuba, she grew up in the USA and Chile, the daughter of an American mother and a Spanish father who met after…

Poet

Alastair Reid

B. 1926 D. 2014

4 poems available

Alastair Reid (1926-2014) was one of Scotland’s foremost literary figures, admired as a craftsman in poetry, prose and translation. Since he left Scotland during World War II, he lived variously in Spain, France, Switzerland, the United States and South America….

Poet

5 poems available

Vincent O’Sullivan (b.1937, Auckland, New Zealand) lectured at Victoria University, Wellington (1963-1966) and Waikato University, Hamilton (1968-1978). In the following years he was the literary editor of the New Zealand Listener (1979-1980) and Writer in Residence (1981-1987) at several Australian…

Poet

Sarah Maguire

B. 1957 D. 2017

5 poems available

Few other contemporary British poets combine the intensity of Sarah Maguire’s lyrical imagination with the breadth of her geopolitical reach. From the first poem (‘May Day, 1986’) of her first collection (Spilt Milk), her searchingly intelligent poems interrogated how even…

Poet

5 poems available

Deryn Rees-Jones was named as one of the Next Generation Poets following her spirited debut The Memory Tray, which was also shortlisted for a 1994 Forward Prize. This collection recaptures the dream-state of childhood, exploring issues of gender, identity and…

Poet

4 poems available

Susan Hampton (b. 1949) was born in Inverell, New South Wales. She taught literature and journalism and has been writer-in-residence at several Australian universities. Since 1992, she has lived in Canberra, where she works as a freelance editor. Hampton has…

Poet

4 poems available

In launching the second collection of poems by Brook Emery, University of Newcastle lecturer and critic Christopher Pollnitz declared “Misplaced Heart is the best book of Australian poetry I’ve read so far in the twenty-first century. It’s a book that…

Poet

7 poems available

Helen Farish was born in 1962 in Cumbria, where she now lives. She has been a Fellow at Hawthornden International Centre for Writers and was the first female Poet in Residence at the Wordsworth Trust (2004-5). She has also been…

Poet

6 poems available

Polly Clark was born in Toronto, Canada and brought up in Lancashire, Cumbria and the Borders of Scotland. She has pursued several careers, including zoo-keeping at Edinburgh Zoo, teaching English in Hungary, and publishing at Oxford University Press. She won…

Poet

5 poems available

Matthew Hollis (b. 1971) has published two collections of his own poetry, and has contributed to several other poetic careers as an editor at Faber and Faber. He has also co-edited 101 Poems against War and, with W N Herbert,…

Poet

4 poems available

Douglas Dunn (b. 1942) was awarded an OBE in 2003 for his services to literature over a career that includes many books of plays, poems, essays and fiction, as author and editor, and awards such as the Hawthornden Prize, the…

Poet

Clive James

B. 1939 D. 2019

4 poems available

Clive James (b. 1939, Sydney) is well known to UK audiences for work throughout the cultural sphere. His career as a poet continued alongside work that is, perhaps, more high-profile – he was the author of more than thirty books,…

Poet

1 poem available

Adam Foulds (born 1974) is a poet and novelist who writes with striking range and ambition. His verse novella, The Broken Word won the Costa Poetry Prize in 2008. By then, Foulds had already won the endorsement of the Sunday…

Poet

John Montague

B. 1929 D. 2016

5 poems available

John Montague (b.1929, New York), the author of many books of poetry, stories, memoirs and essays, has been called “the greatest Irish poet of his generation” by Derek Mahon. Born to Irish parents in America, he returned to Ireland at…

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