Dame Carol Ann Duffy [] is a Scottish poet and playwright. She is a professor of contemporary poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, and was appointed Poet Laureate in May 2009, resigning in 2019. She was the first female poet, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.
Simon Robert Armitage is an English poet, playwright, musician and novelist. He was appointed Poet Laureate on 10 May 2019. He is professor of poetry at the University of Leeds.
George Elliott Clarke, is a Canadian poet, playwright and literary critic who served as the Poet Laureate of Toronto from 2012 to 2015 and as the 2016–2017 Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate. His work is known largely for its use of a vast range of literary and artistic traditions, its lush physicality and its bold political substance. One of Canada's most illustrious poets, Clarke is also known for chronicling the experience and history of the Black Canadian communities of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, creating a cultural geography that he has coined "Africadia".
Donald Paterson is a Scottish poet, writer and musician.
The New British Poetry 1968-88 was a poetry anthology from 1988, jointly edited by Gillian Allnutt, Fred D'Aguiar, Ken Edwards and Eric Mottram, respectively concerned with feminist, Black British, younger experimental and British poetry revival poets. The book's general editor was John Muckle, founder of the Paladin Poetry Series. He attempted to challenge what many saw as a narrowly defined 'mainstream' by creating a book around different strands in radical poetry and four editors who might not otherwise have worked together: "Their differences, both in the shape they have given their selections and in their introductory remarks, make this a many-sided, exciting, unpredictable - and no doubt contentious book." The anthology's multicultural and counter-cultural stance gave it a strong anti-Thatcherite flavour. The book was widely if critically reviewed and went on to influence a number of subsequent anthologies of British poetry.
Gillian Clarke is a Welsh poet and playwright, who also edits, broadcasts, lectures and translates from Welsh into English. She co-founded Tŷ Newydd, a writers' centre in North Wales.
The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is a prize that was, for many years, awarded by the Poetry Book Society (UK) to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in honour of its founding poet, T. S. Eliot. Since its inception, the prize money was donated by Eliot's widow, Mrs Valerie Eliot and more recently it has been given by the T. S. Eliot Estate.
Jo Shapcott FRSL is an English poet, editor and lecturer who has won the National Poetry Competition, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Costa Book of the Year Award, a Forward Poetry Prize and the Cholmondeley Award.
Lorna Gaye Goodison CD is a Jamaican poet, essayist and memoirist, a leading West Indian writer, whose career spans four decades. She is now Professor Emerita, English Language and Literature/Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan, previously serving as the Lemuel A. Johnson Professor of English and African and Afroamerican Studies. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Jamaica in 2017, serving in the role until 2020.
Grace Nichols FRSL is a Guyanese poet who moved to Britain in 1977, before which she worked as a teacher and journalist in Guyana. Her first collection, I is a Long-Memoried Woman (1983), won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. In December 2021, she was announced as winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
Imtiaz Dharker is a Pakistan-born British poet, artist, and video film maker. She won the Queen's Gold Medal for her English poetry and was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University from January 2020.
John Agard FRSL is an Afro-Guyanese playwright, poet and children's writer, now living in Britain. In 2012, he was selected for the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. He was awarded BookTrust's Lifetime Achievement Award in November 2021.
Bloodaxe Books is a British publishing house specializing in poetry.
Michael Donaghy was a New York City poet and musician, who lived in London from 1985.
Gillian Allnutt is an English poet, author of 9 collections and recipient of several prizes including the 2016 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
David John Constantine is an English poet, author and translator.
Poetry Live is a series of annual events in venues across the UK where poets perform their poetry for school children studying GCSE level English Literature.
Poetry on the Lake is the event founded in 2001 by the director and organizer Gabriel Griffin, the seat is on Isola di San Giulio. Since 2001 Kevin Bailey has co-organised and judged at the annual Poetry on the Lake festival held at Orta San Giulio in Italy, the antique island on Lake Orta, northern Italy. Annual events include the spring international poetry competition and the autumn celebration described by the British Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy on the South Bank Show, ITV, 6 December 2009 as: "...perhaps the smallest but possibly the most perfect poetry festival in the world". Events take place on the island, in the square of Orta, on Sacro Monte in the woods around the chapels, in the historic palaces on board ship, in the neighbouring towns and villages: Omegna, Orta, Pella, Varallo, Invorio and Ameno.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
United Kingdom