Rachel McCarthy | |
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 McCarthy photographed by The Guardian , 2015 | |
| Born | Rachel Elizabeth McCarthy 31 July 1984 Preston, Lancashire, England |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | University College, Durham (BSc, PhD) |
| Occupations |
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| Years active | 2006–present |
| Notable work | Element (2015) |
| Awards |
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| Website | www |
Rachel McCarthy (born 31 July 1984) is a British scientist, poet, and broadcaster.
Rachel Elizabeth McCarthy was born in Preston, Lancashire. She was educated at St Mary's Catholic Primary School in Leyland, St Mary's Catholic High School, Leyland and studied six A-levels at Runshaw College, Leyland. She studied Natural Sciences at Durham University as a member of University College. She graduated in 2006 with double first class honours in Chemistry and Physics, later completing a doctorate in Climatology.
In 2008, she joined the Met Office soon becoming a Senior Climate Scientist, specialising in Climate Impacts and Disaster Risk Reduction. In 2010, she was seconded to London to advise the UK Government Department of Energy and Climate Change on policy matters relating to weather and climate, including renewable energy provision. On her return to the Met Office she worked as Private Secretary to the Met Office Chief Scientist Prof. Dame Julia Slingo and became the first to hold the post of Expert Scientist in Communications.[ citation needed ]. She was contributor to and editor responsible for the Met office Hadley Centre's contributions to Sir John Houghton's 5th edition of Global Warming:the complete briefing. [1] [2]
In 2009, she established ExCite Poetry, [3] the Devon arm of the UK Poetry Society. Within six months of its formation, ExCite Poetry became the largest regional arm of the Poetry Society by a significant margin with well over 200 members and was consequently the focus of the first of a series of poetry workshops with Ruth Padel on BBC Radio 4. [4] Between 2009 and 2013, she co-hosted a monthly arts-review show on Phonic FM, [5] hailed by The Sunday Times as "providing some of the most inspiring broadcasting in the country". [6] In 2013, she became Director of the Exeter Poetry Festival. [7]
In 2015 McCarthy won the first Laureate's Choice Award. [8] In 2016 she converted the research behind the book into a one-woman multimedia experience called 'Alphabet of Our Universe' with numerous shows across the UK and an exclusive interview with McCarthy in The Guardian on Alphabet's Oxford premiere. [9] [10]
The same year she was appointed as an Expert for the European Commission, to advise on the scientific validity of projects submitted under the EU's H2020 Climate Programme; the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020). [11]
In 2015, she was chosen by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy as one of four of the most exciting new voices in British poetry that year. Her first pamphlet "Element" was published in June 2015 by Smith Doorstop under the imprint of Laureate's Choice, [12] taking its impetus from the naming and properties of the transition metals of the periodic table. The Laureates Choice scheme continued for a further four years and to celebrate the culmination of Carol Ann Duffy's tenure as Poet Laureate eight of McCarthy's poems and an interview were published in 'The Laureate's Choice Anthology' in 2019, which anthologised the work of all twenty 'exciting and eclectic new voices in contemporary verse'. [13]
Edward James Hughes was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. He was appointed Poet Laureate in 1984 and held the office until his death. In 2008, The Times ranked Hughes fourth on its list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".
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, and her term expired in 2019. She was the first female poet laureate, the first Scottish-born poet and the first openly lesbian poet to hold the Poet Laureate position.
Sir Andrew Motion is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work. In 2012, he became President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, taking over from Bill Bryson.
Jane Draycott FRSL is a British poet, artistic collaborator and poetry translator. She was born in London in 1954 and studied at King's College London and the University of Bristol. Draycott's fifth collection The Kingdom was published in 2023 by Carcanet Press.
Patience Agbabi FRSL is a British poet and performer who emphasizes the spoken word. Although her poetry hits hard in addressing contemporary themes, it often makes use of formal constraints, including traditional poetic forms. She has described herself as "bicultural" and bisexual. Issues of racial and gender identity feature in her poetry. She is celebrated "for paying equal homage to literature and performance" and for work that "moves fluidly and nimbly between cultures, dialects, voices; between page and stage." In 2017, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Picador is an imprint of Pan Macmillan in the United Kingdom and Australia and of Macmillan Publishing in the United States. Both companies are owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group.
Jacqueline Margaret Kay, is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works Other Lovers (1993), Trumpet (1998) and Red Dust Road (2011). Kay has won many awards, including the Somerset Maugham Award in 1994, the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011.
Kathryn Williams is an English singer-songwriter who to date has released 14 studio albums, written and arranged for a multitude of artists, and was nominated for the 2000 Mercury Music Prize.
Imtiaz Dharker is a Pakistani-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.
Daljit Nagra is a British poet whose debut collection, Look We Have Coming to Dover! – a title alluding to W. H. Auden's Look, Stranger!, D. H. Lawrence's Look! We Have Come Through! and by epigraph also to Matthew Arnold's "Dover Beach" – was published by Faber in February 2007. Nagra's poems relate to the experience of Indians born in the UK, and often employ language that imitates the English spoken by Indian immigrants whose first language is Punjabi, which some have termed "Punglish". He currently works part-time at JFS School in Kenton, London, and visits schools, universities and festivals where he performs his work. He was appointed chair of the Royal Society of Literature in November 2020. He is a professor of creative writing at Brunel University London.
The World's Wife is a collection of poetry by Carol Ann Duffy, originally published in the UK in 1999 by both Picador and Anvil Press Poetry and later published in the United States by Faber and Faber in 2000.
The British Poet Laureate is an honorary position appointed by the monarch of the United Kingdom on the advice of the prime minister. The role does not entail any specific duties, but there is an expectation that the holder will write verse for significant national occasions. The laureateship dates to 1616 when a pension was provided to Ben Jonson, but the first official Laureate was John Dryden, appointed in 1668 by Charles II. On the death of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who held the post between November 1850 and October 1892, there was a break of four years as a mark of respect; Tennyson's laureate poems "Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" were particularly cherished by the Victorian public. Four poets, Thomas Gray, Samuel Rogers, Walter Scott and Philip Larkin turned down the laureateship. Historically appointed for an unfixed term and typically held for life, since 1999 the term has been ten years. The holder of the position as at 2024 is Simon Armitage who succeeded Carol Ann Duffy in May 2019 after 10 years in office.
Dorothy Nimmo was an English poet, winner of the Cholmondeley Award in 1996.
"Last Post" is a poem written by Carol Ann Duffy, the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom, in 2009. It was commissioned by the BBC to mark the deaths of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, two of the last three surviving British veterans from the First World War, and was first broadcast on the BBC Radio 4 programme Today on 30 July 2009, the date of Allingham's funeral.
"The Little Red Cap" is a poem by Carol Ann Duffy published by Picador as a part of her 1999 collection of poetry titled The World's Wife. The book consists of poems that are based on old stories and tales in which she reshapes in terms of modern day culture. Duffy is known for her trait to take previous stories, tales, etc. and change them into her own "What you can do as a poet is take on a story and make it new" she once said to Barry Wood in an interview. Duffy's Little Red Cap is a great model of her style of poetry in the collection. The World's Wife was created based on stories of heroes that were an inspiration to her. Duffy also believed that these tales and stories did not interpret the truth. Duffy's belief in feminist literary criticism is apparent as she believed that in order to find the truth, the female character was to be dominant. Most of Duffy's poetry has feminist interest. She found that the original Little Red Cap fairy tale was an example of feminism in both fairy tales and English literature. She then found a personal connection within the original story line to help form a dominant female character in her writing.
The Ted Hughes Award was an annual literary prize given to a living UK poet for new work in poetry. It was awarded each spring in recognition of a work from the previous year. It was a project which ran alongside Carol Ann Duffy's tenure as Poet Laureate, which ended when Duffy finished her 10 years as Poet Laureate in 2019
Elizabeth Lefroy is a British poet.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
Hera Lindsay Bird is a New Zealand poet.
Zeina Hashem Beck is a Lebanese poet. She published five short story collections and many poems. She has won several awards including the Frederick Bock Prize in 2017 for her poem "Maqam".
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