Michael Schmidt (poet)

Michael Schmidt OBE, FRSL
Born	(1947-03-02) 2 March 1947 (age 78) Mexico City, Mexico
Alma mater	Harvard University Wadham College, Oxford
Occupation(s)	Poet, author, scholar and publisher
Known for	Founder of Carcanet Press and of PN Review
Website	www.michaelschmidt.org.uk

Michael Schmidt OBE ^[1] FRSL ^[2] (born 2 March 1947) ^[3] is a Mexican-British poet, author, scholar and publisher.

Early life

Schmidt was born in Mexico City, Mexico, on 2 March 1947. He was educated at The Hill School from 1959 to 1965 and earned an English-Speaking Union Scholarship to attend Christ's Hospital School (1965–66). He studied at Harvard University and at Wadham College, Oxford University, subsequently settling in England. ^[4]

Career

Schmidt was Professor of Poetry at Glasgow University until 2014, Writer-in-Residence at St. John's College, Cambridge, from 2012 to 2015 and a visiting fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 2017 to 2018. He is founder (1969) and editorial and managing director of Carcanet Press and a founder (1973) and general editor of PN Review . ^[5]

A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (elected in 1993), ^[2] Schmidt was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2006 for services to poetry. ^[6] His literary career has been described as having "a strong sense of internationalism and cultural 'connectedness'". ^[4] Schmidt refers to himself in his 1998 book Lives of the Poets as "an Anglophone Mexican publisher". ^[4]

In 2006, Schmidt delivered the keynote address at the StAnza Poetry Festival, entitled "What, How Well, Why?: A leading poetry publisher wonders why criticism has got a bad name". ^[7]

Schmidt's 2014 book, The Novel: A Biography, is a loosely chronological history of the development of the novel. ^[8] The book aims to explore the relationships between great novelists, including views by other novelists, while avoiding literary critics who were not also writers. ^[9] In August 2015, Schmidt was one of 20 authors of Poets for Corbyn, an anthology of poems endorsing Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. ^{[10] [11]}

Selected bibliography

Poetry

• It Was My Tree (Anvil, 1970)
• Bedlam and the Oak Wood (Carcanet, 1970)
• Desert of the Lions (Carcanet, 1972)
• My Brother Gloucester (Carcanet, 1976)
• A Change of Affairs (Anvil, 1978)
• The Love of Strangers – Poetry Book Society Special Commendation (Century Hutchinson, 1989)
• Selected Poems, 1972-1997 – Poetry Book Society Special Commendation (Smith/Doorstop, 1997)
• The Resurrection of the Body (USA: Sheep Meadow; Smith/Doorstop, 2007)
• Collected Poems (Smith/Doorstop, 2009, Sheep Meadow Press, 2010)
• The Stories of My Life (Smith/Doorstop 2013)

Fiction

• The Colonist – Los Angeles Times book award (Muller/Hutchinson, 1983; published in USA as Green Island, Vanguard, 1984, Dell, 1985)
• The Dresden Gate (Century Hutchinson, 1988; Vanguard, 1989)

Criticism

• Reading Modern Poetry (London: Routledge, 1989), ISBN   0-415-01568-5
• Lives of the Poets (Phoenix, 1998), ISBN   978-0-7538-0745-3
• The Story of Poetry: From Cædmon to Caxton; From Skelton to Dryden; From Pope to Burns (three volumes) (2001–2006)
• The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets (2004)
• The Novel: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014)
• Gilgamesh: The Life of a Poem (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019)

Anthologies

• New Poetries I-VIII (Carcanet, 1994–2018)
• Eleven British Poets (Methuen, 1980)
• The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry in English (1999, 2005) (editor)
• A Calendar of Modern Poetry (PN Review 100, 1994)
• The Great Modern Poets (including audio excerpts), Quercus Poetry, 2006, ISBN   9780857382467

References

1. "Poetry Professor offers Independent thinking". University of Glasgow. 8 March 2008. Retrieved 13 November 2015.
2. "Michael Schmidt". rsliterature.org. September 2023. Retrieved 26 January 2024.
3. "Life/Letters | Curriculum Vitae", Michael Schmidt website.
4. "Contemporary Writers", British Council, Arts. Archived 7 September 2006 at the Wayback Machine
5. "Michael Schmidt". Poetry Foundation . Retrieved 2 April 2025.
6. Schmidt, Michael (2007). The Resurrection of the Body. Smith/Doorstop Books.
7. "Michael's Bookshelf: Poetry's 'Cheerleaders' and the Culture of Reception". carcanetblog. 14 October 2011. Retrieved 2 April 2025.
8. Deresiewicz, William (June 2014). "How the Novel Made the Modern World". The Atlantic . Retrieved 5 March 2016.
9. Eaglestone, Robert (31 July 2014). "The Novel: A Biography, by Michael Schmidt". Times Higher Education . Retrieved 5 March 2016.
10. Bennetts, Russell (2015). Poets for Corbyn (PDF). Pendant Publishing. ISBN   978-0-9928034-5-2.
11. Bennetts, Russell (25 August 2015). "Yes we scan: Poets line up for Jeremy Corbyn". The Guardian . Retrieved 15 July 2017.

External links

• Official website
• Michael Schmidt biography at Carcanet Press
• Profile on Contemporary Writers
• "What, How Well, Why?"—Schmidt's Lecture from StAnza, Scotland's annual poetry festival
• Podcast interview with Schmidt by André Naffis-Sahely, 2 December 2009.
• "The Rylands Brief: Michael Schmidt", The University of Manchester, 2020.