The Inaugural Basil Bunting Poetry Award 2009
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Photo: Caroline Forbes |
Sean O’Brien is a poet, critic, broadcaster and editor. He grew up in Hull and lives in Newcastle upon Tyne. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and 2007 recipient of the Northern Rock Foundation Writer’s Award. His books include, in 1998, essays on contemporary poetry, The Deregulated Muse, and an anthology The Firebox: Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945, and in 2006, a new verse version of Dante’s Inferno. His selected poems, Cousin Coat: Selected Poems 1976-2001 was published in 2002. His six individual poetry collections have all won awards, most recently The Drowned Book, which won both the 2007 Forward and T S Eliot Prizes, the first time a book has won both awards. |
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Linda France was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. After some time living away, she moved back to the North East in 1981. She currently lives close to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland. Her poetry collections, published by Bloodaxe Books, include The Simultaneous Dress (2002) and The Toast of the Kit Cat Club (2005), a biography in verse of the 18th century traveller and writer Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Linda also edited the acclaimed anthology Sixty Women Poets (Bloodaxe 1993). She has worked on a number of collaborations with visual artists and musicians and over 20 Public Art projects. Linda currently teaches Creative Writing at the University of Newcastle. |
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Paul Batchelor has been described as “a poet free of contemporary orthodoxies” (Sunday Times). He was born in Northumberland in 1977. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2003. His pamphlet, To Photograph a Snow Crystal, appeared in 2005 from Smith Doorstop, and his first full-length collection, The Sinking Road (Bloodaxe) was published in 2008 and shortlisted for the Jerwood-Aldeburgh Best First Collection prize and the Glen Dimplex Prize for Best First Collection. He teaches creative writing for the Poetry School and reviews poetry and literary fiction for the Times. |