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The poets - women

Patience Agbabi

Patience Agbabi was first published in a school magazine when she came third in a sonnet competition. She published her first poetry collection, R.A.W. (Gecko Press, 1995) after appearing in several magazines and anthologies. Her latest collection is Transformatrix (Canongate Books, 2000). Bloodshot Monochrome is her forthcoming collection with Canongate in Spring 2008.

Gillian Allnutt

Gillian Allnutt has published seven collections of poetry. The latest, How the Bicycle Shone: New and Selected Poems, was published by Bloodaxe Books in 2007. For many years she has worked in schools and adult education as a creative writing teacher. Born in London in 1949, she now lives near Durham.

Moniza Alvi

Moniza Alvi was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hertfordshire. Her five books of poetry include The Country at My Shoulder (OUP, 1993), and most recently How the Stone Found Its Voice (Bloodaxe, 2005). She lives in London with her husband and young daughter and tutors for the Poetry School.

Colette Bryce

Colette Bryce left Ireland when she was 18 and has lived in London, Madrid, Dundee and Newcastle upon Tyne in the years since. She has published two collections of poems, The Heel of Bernadette (2000) and The Full Indian Rope Trick (2004), and a pamphlet The Observations of Aleksandr Svetlov (2007).

Polly Clark

Polly Clark was born in Canada and brought up in Cumbria, Lancashire and the borders of Scotland. She has been a zookeeper, a teacher of English in Hungary and is now a freelance writer. Her two collections are Kiss (Bloodaxe, 2000) and Take Me With You (Bloodaxe, 2005). She lives on the west coast of Scotland.

Wendy Cope

Wendy Cope read history at Oxford and then worked as a teacher in London primary schools. Her first book, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (1986) was followed by Serious Concerns (1991) and If I Don’t Know (2001). She has been freelance since 1986 and now lives in Winchester.

Julia Darling

Julia Darling co-founded Diamond Twig Press with Ellen Phethean in 1992 and was an early recipient of the Northern Rock Award for literature in 2003. Her novels include The Taxi Driver’s Daughter (Penguin, 2003), and her plays are brought together in Eating the Elephant (2005).Through her poetry, including Apologies for Absence (2004), she sought to open up the language around illness and healthcare, particularly breast cancer from which she died in 2005. www.juliadarling.co.uk.

Bernadine Evaristo

Bernadine Evaristo is the author of three novels which fuse poetry and fiction, Lara (ARP 1997), The Emperor’s Babe (Penguin 2001), Soul Tourists (Penguin 2005). Her new novel Blonde Roots has no poetry in it! (Penguin 2008). She has won several awards and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Visit www.bevaristo.net to fill in the gaps.

UA Fanthorpe

UA Fanthorpe – after teaching English for 16 years – decided to try her luck as a writer, and she was in fact pitchforked into poetry when working in a hospital. She has published ten collections of poetry, as well as Collected Poems 1978-2003. In 2003 she was awarded The Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry – only the fifth woman to gain this award in 70 years.

Linda France

Linda France has worked as a poet, tutor and editor since the 1980s and is currently experimenting with fiction. When she was a teenager she thought a ‘real writer’ wrote novels – DH Lawrence’s ‘one bright book of life’. She thinks part of her may still believe that. Visit her website, www.lindafrance.co.uk

Sophie Hannah

Sophie Hannah writes poetry and psychological crime fiction. Her latest poetry collection, Pessimism for Beginners, was shortlisted for the 2007 TS Eliot Award. Her crime novels Little Face and Hurting Distance have sold more than 200,000 copies and are in the process of being adapted for television.

Rita Ann Higgins

Rita Ann Higgins has published eight collections of poetry. Five with Salmon publishing and three with Bloodaxe, including her latest collection Throw in the vowels: new and selected poems 2005. She has written four plays and has been writer in residence at the National University of Ireland. She is a member of Aosdána.

Jane Holland

Jane Holland was born in Essex in 1966, she wrote poetry at school but didn’t publish any until nearly thirty. She won an Eric Gregory Award for poetry in 1996 and published her first book with Bloodaxe. Her second collection, Boudicca & Co, was published by Salt in 2006. She has five children.

Jackie Kay

Jackie Kay was born and brought up in Scotland. Her recent collection of short stories, Wish I was Here won the Decibel Prize, British Book Award. Her most recent collections of poetry Darling, New and Selected Poems was published last year along with Red, Cherry Red. She teaches at Newcastle University.

Elspeth Kirkman

Elspeth Kirkman was born in Swindon, grew up in Hull and is a recent graduate of Warwick University in Coventry. She has now moved to London where she is trying to pass for a grown up. She loves loyalty points, complex carbohydrates and stationary.

Gwyneth Lewis

Gwyneth Lewis has published six books of poetry, the English ones collected in Chaotic Angels (Bloodaxe, 2005). She’s also written Sunbathing in the Rain: A Cheerful Book on Depression (Harper Perennial) and Two in a Boat, about a sea voyage to North Africa with her husband. She lives in Cardiff.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892 in Maine, USA. Her first collection, Renascence and Other Poems was published in 1917. She lived in Greenwich Village, where she met other prominent writers and artists. She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, in 1923 with her fourth book.

Clare Pollard

Clare Pollard has published three collections of poetry, the first of which – The Heavy-Petting Zoo (Bloodaxe, 1998) – she wrote whilst still at school. Her play The Weather (Faber, 2004), about a poltergeist, was performed at the Royal Court. She likes romantic comedies, tarot cards, coloured tights and parties.

Penelope Shuttle

Penelope Shuttle has published eight collections of poetry since 1980, five novels, and is co-author of two prose works, best known of which is The Wise Wound. Her latest collection, Redgrove’s Wife (Bloodaxe Books), was shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2007 and for the 2007 TS Eliot Award. She is one of the judges for the 2008 National Poetry Prize.

Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith was born in Hull in 1902. When she was three, she moved to live with her mother and sister at her aunt’s house in London, where she stayed for the rest of her life. She worked in a publisher’s office, then retired in 1953 to look after her aunt. She died in 1971. She wrote three novels and ten books of poems including Stevie Smith: A Selection, edited by Hermione Lee (Faber, 1983).

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