Geraldine Monk (born 1952) is a British poet. [1] She was born in Blackburn, Lancashire. Since the late 1970s, she has published many collections of poetry and has recorded her poetry in collaboration with musicians. Monk's poetry has been published in many anthologies, most recently appearing in the Anthology of 20th Century British and Irish Poetry.
Monk was born into a working-class family and raised as a Roman Catholic, something she believes has had an important effect on her work. [2] She was, she said, "Brought up with a parallel world of saints, angels, martyrs, the Holy Ghost and the Blessed Virgin Mary. No wonder I was so easily spooked. The ‘other world’ was a reality from birth." [2] She left Lancashire at the age of 18, and moved to Leeds. In 1974 she moved to Staithes, Yorkshire and began to write. The British Electronic Poetry Centre's entry for Geraldine Monk says: "1967 escaped school. 1969 escaped factories. 1974 escaped Leeds. Moved to Staithes, North Yorkshire for 10 years of 'splendid isolation', some very odd jobs and increasing preoccupation with reading and writing poetry." In 1984 Monk moved to Sheffield, where she has lived ever since. [2] Monk was married to the English artist and poet Alan Halsey. Monk and Halsey were, between them, proprietors of West House Books which has published and promoted a number of Monk's collections, as well as publishing the work of many other contemporary poets. [3] Halsey has also provided visual art and book designs for several of Monk's books. Monk gained a B.A. in English Studies from Sheffield City Polytechnic in 1988, and between 1992 and 1995 was Visiting lecturer in Creative Writing & Communication Studies at Chesterfield College. Between 1992 and 1999 she was Creative Writer at St. Luke's Hospice.
Monk's first pamphlet appeared in 1974, self-published under the imprint of Siren Press. From the mid-seventies onwards, her work was published by various small publishers, including Bob Cobbing's Writers Forum, and Peter Hodgkiss's Galloping Dog Press. From the start, and throughout her career, the importance of performance, and the sound of the spoken word has been a major part of Monk's poetry. [4] She is regarded as an innovative, or experimental, poet. [5] Her work incorporates song, found text, and material drawn from such sources as childhood games [6] In 1994 she published the long poem "Interregnum", which is an account of the hanging of the Pendle witches in 1612. "Interregnum" includes themes of landscape, [7] the relationship between the animal and human worlds, [7] and patriarchal domination. [7] The poem is seen as being in the tradition of political radicalism. [8] Monk's most recent works, such as "Escafeld Hangings", continue one of her themes of women in history, focussing in that case, on Mary Queen of Scots. Monk has increasingly collaborated with musicians in her performances and recordings.
Monk's pamphlet publications, or publications in other media, are often brought together into larger books, such as Noctivagations (2001), a selected volume of work written since the mid-1990s. [9] For example, Noctivagations includes the sequence "Songings" (the subject of Monk’s collaboration with Martin Archer). This piece, according to Scott Thurston 'resonates with lyric moments of visionary power'. [9] The volume 'Lobe Scarps & Finials', published in 2011 by Leafe Press is similarly a gathering of work published during the preceding period. This collection has been described as containing "oppositions: between the individualism of lyric utterance and the political context in which it takes place; between the opacity produced by her densely patterned sounds ... and a plain-spoken brusqueness". [10] In 2003, Salt Publishing brought out Monk's Selected Poems, and in 2007 also published The Salt Companion to Geraldine Monk, a book of critical works on her poetry. [11]
Monk also provided voice & words for the album Fluvium, collaborating with Martin Archer and Julie Tippetts, released by Discus Music.
The British Poetry Revival is the general name now given to a loose movement in the United Kingdom that took place in the late 1960s and 1970s. The term was a neologism first used in 1964, postulating a New British Poetry to match the anthology The New American Poetry (1960) edited by Donald Allen.
Brian William Bransom Griffiths, known as Bill Griffiths, was a poet and Anglo-Saxon scholar associated with the British Poetry Revival.
Lee Harwood was an English poet associated with the British Poetry Revival.
Priscilla Denise Levertov was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was heavily influenced by the Black Mountain Poets and by the political context of the Vietnam War, which she explored in her poetry book The Freeing of the Dust. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry.
Phyllis Webb was a Canadian poet and broadcaster.
Alison Croggon is a contemporary Australian poet, playwright, fantasy novelist, and librettist.
Alan Halsey was a British poet. He managed The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye from 1979 to 1997. From 1997, Halsey lived in Sheffield, working as a specialist bookseller and publishing West House Books.
Annie Finch is an American poet, critic, editor, translator, playwright, and performer and the editor of the first major anthology of literature about abortion. Her poetry is known for its often incantatory use of rhythm, meter, and poetic form and for its themes of feminism, witchcraft, goddesses, and earth-based spirituality. Her books include The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells, Spells: New and Selected Poems, The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self, A Poet's Craft, Calendars, and Among the Goddesses.
Salena Godden is an English poet, author, activist, broadcaster, memoirist and essayist. Born in Hastings, UK, of Jamaican-Irish heritage, Godden based in London. Widely anthologised, she has published several books. She has also written for BBC TV and radio and has released four studio albums to date.
Mary Jo Bang is an American poet.
The Floure and the Leafe is an anonymous Middle English allegorical poem in 595 lines of rhyme royal, written around 1470. During the 17th, 18th, and most of the 19th century it was mistakenly believed to be the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, and was generally considered to be one of his finest poems. The name of the author is not known but the poem presents itself as the work of a woman, and some critics are inclined to take this at face value. The poet was certainly well-read, there being a number of echoes of earlier writers in the poem, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, John Gower, Andreas Capellanus, Guillaume de Lorris, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, and the authors of the "Lai du Trot" and the Kingis Quair.
Shamshad Khan is a widely anthologised Manchester-based poet.
Alan Baker is a British poet. He has been the editor of the poetry publisher Leafe Press since 2000, and the online magazine Litter since 2005.
Robert Sheppard is British poet and critic. He is at the forefront of the movement sometimes called "linguistically innovative poetry."
Ágnes Lehóczky is a Hungarian-British poet, academic and translator born in Budapest, 1976.
Writers Forum is a small publisher, workshop and writers' network established by Bob Cobbing. The roots of Writers Forum were in the 1954 arts organisation Group H, and the And magazine that Cobbing edited. The writers' branch of Group H was called Writers Forum. In 1963 a press with the publishing imprint "Writers Forum" was begun and administered by Cobbing, John Rowan and Jeff Nuttall. Between 1963 and 2002 Writers' Forum published more than one thousand pamphlets and books including works by John Cage, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, and P. J. O'Rourke, as well as a wide range of British Poetry Revival modernist poets, such as Eric Mottram, Bill Griffiths, Geraldine Monk, Maggie O'Sullivan, Paula Claire and Sean Bonney. While publishing was integral to the Cobbing-led workshop, it also provided an opportunity for poets to read their works in a supportive and non-critical environment.
Renée Ashley is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and educator.
Diane Lockward is an American poet. The author of four full-length books of poetry, Lockward serves as the Poet Laureate of West Caldwell, New Jersey.
Kate Fagan is an Australian poet, musician and academic.
Paula Claire is a British Poet-Artist, whose work spans the areas of sound, visual, concrete and performance poetry. She was associated with the British Poetry Revival Movement in the 1970s and a member of Konkrete Canticle, a poetry collective founded by Bob Cobbing, which performed works for multiple voices and instruments. She has performed and exhibited her poetry internationally since 1969, creating site-specific performance pieces and using the voice contributions of her audience. She is founder and curator of the Paula Claire Archive: fromWORDtoART - International Poet-Artists, a collected body of work by fellow poet-artists.
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