Collected Poems

Description

The Welsh publishing house Gwasg Gomer published Gillian Clarke's first full collection of poems, The Sundial, in 1978. In the twenty years since then the poet has become one of the best-loved and most widely read writers of Wales, well-known for her readings, for her radio work and her workshops. Gillian Clarke is a severe critic of her own poemsCollected Poems includes all that she wishes to preserve of her work to date."

Born in Cardiff, Gillian Clarke is a poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer and translator (from Welsh). In 2008 Clarke was appointed National Poet of Wales and in 2010 she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Her poetry is studied by GCSE and A Level students throughout Britain. She edited the Anglo-Welsh Review from 1975 to 1984, and has taught creative writing in primary and secondary schools and at university level. She is president of Ty Newydd, the writers' centre in North Wales which she co-founded in 1990. Since 1994 she has been a tutor in Creative Writing at the University of Glamorgan. Clarke was the inaugural Capital Poet for Cardiff 2005-6. She has given poetry readings and lectures in Europe and the United States, and her work has been translated into ten languages. She has a daughter and two sons, and now lives with her architect husband on a smallholding in Ceredigion, Wales, where they raise a small flock of sheep, and care for the land according to organic and conservation practice. Carcanet publish her Selected Poems and Collected Poems, as well as her many poetry collections, including Letting in the Rumour (1989, Poetry Book Society Recommendation), The King of Britain's Daughter (1993), Five Fields (1998), Making the Beds for the Dead (2004), A Recipe for Water (2009) and Ice (2012), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Her prose memoir At the Source: A Writer's Year was published in 2008.