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Gillian Clarke
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Gillian Clarke's poems ring with lucidity and power...her work is personal and archetypal, built out of language as concrete as it is musical.' - Times Literary Supplement
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) and A Recipe for Water (2009). Her prose memoir At the Source: A Writer's Year was published in 2008.
The Gillian Clarke page on the Poetry Archive website has audio recordings of her poetry and other useful resources. Click here.
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) and A Recipe for Water (2009). Her prose memoir At the Source: A Writer's Year was published in 2008.
The Gillian Clarke page on the Poetry Archive website has audio recordings of her poetry and other useful resources. Click here.
A celebrated wordsmith has been entertaining university staff and students. read more
The National Poet for Wales will give a reading of her work at Keele University. read more
Gillian Clarke (Touchstone Lyricist) freezes with Ice (Carcanet, RPP £9.95), read more
'This collection is a kind of seasonal Shepherd's Calendar .' January to mid-March 1947: the Big Freeze. read more
As the title suggests, water dominates Gillian Clarke's A Recipe for Water , a substantial collection of close on eighty poems - rich with her perennial themes of language, history and landscape. read more
Welsh poets may still sense a bardic responsibility to speak for their communities. read more
Welsh poets may still sense a bardic responsibility to speak for their communities. read more
Belinda Cooke, Poetry Ireland Review , Issue 86
Something Endures
In Making Beds for the Dead , Gillian Clarke begins with an explanation of the nature of creativity, of language in particular, a process in which she draws on associations with friends past and present. read more
Something Endures
In Making Beds for the Dead , Gillian Clarke begins with an explanation of the nature of creativity, of language in particular, a process in which she draws on associations with friends past and present. read more
Elizabeth Burns, Orbis magazine, Autumn 2004
At the beginning is a poem about a Vermeer painting, where a woman peels an apple and from it learns about the universe: 'The apple turns / under fixed stars, / Her knife cuts into the Pole...' read more
At the beginning is a poem about a Vermeer painting, where a woman peels an apple and from it learns about the universe: 'The apple turns / under fixed stars, / Her knife cuts into the Pole...' read more
Tim Liardet, North magazine, issue 36, Summer 2005
Gillian Clarke's Making the Beds for the Dead continues with more of what we expect from her: the clarity of her narrative drive, the acute observation of the natural world. read more
Gillian Clarke's Making the Beds for the Dead continues with more of what we expect from her: the clarity of her narrative drive, the acute observation of the natural world. read more
Richard Poole, New Welsh Review , volume 67, spring 2005
Gillian Clarke's new collection is made up of five sequences and twenty-seven poems split into three unequal groups. read more
Gillian Clarke's new collection is made up of five sequences and twenty-seven poems split into three unequal groups. read more
John Scrivener, The Reader , Issue 17, Spring 2005
Where the Future Believes in Itself
Straightaway in this new collection of poems by Gillian Clarke images of close-fitting accuracy arrest your attention: you're made to feel the 'moth-thin pages' of a Bible, or see a woman who, cutting into an apple, 'peels the fruit in a single / ringlet of skin': how exactly this gives us that coil of peel, at once tense and lolling (the single/ringlet repetition mimicking the repeating curls). read more
Where the Future Believes in Itself
Straightaway in this new collection of poems by Gillian Clarke images of close-fitting accuracy arrest your attention: you're made to feel the 'moth-thin pages' of a Bible, or see a woman who, cutting into an apple, 'peels the fruit in a single / ringlet of skin': how exactly this gives us that coil of peel, at once tense and lolling (the single/ringlet repetition mimicking the repeating curls). read more
Reviewed by David Morley in The Guardian , 13th November 2004
All Clarke's books to date have an individual architecture in selection and order, one that requires her readers to grasp the book as a conceptual, even a musical whole. read more
All Clarke's books to date have an individual architecture in selection and order, one that requires her readers to grasp the book as a conceptual, even a musical whole. read more
Reviewed in Planet by Anne Cluysenaar
This is a richly varied collection, remarkable both for its sense of vast perspectives within immediate (often homely) experience and its visceral evocation of current events. read more
This is a richly varied collection, remarkable both for its sense of vast perspectives within immediate (often homely) experience and its visceral evocation of current events. read more
Belinda Cooke, Poetry Ireland Review , Issue 86
Something Endures
In Making Beds for the Dead , Gillian Clarke begins with an explanation of the nature of creativity, of language in particular, a process in which she draws on associations with friends past and present. read more
Something Endures
In Making Beds for the Dead , Gillian Clarke begins with an explanation of the nature of creativity, of language in particular, a process in which she draws on associations with friends past and present. read more
Elizabeth Burns, Orbis magazine, Autumn 2004
At the beginning is a poem about a Vermeer painting, where a woman peels an apple and from it learns about the universe: 'The apple turns / under fixed stars, / Her knife cuts into the Pole...' read more
At the beginning is a poem about a Vermeer painting, where a woman peels an apple and from it learns about the universe: 'The apple turns / under fixed stars, / Her knife cuts into the Pole...' read more
Tim Liardet, North magazine, issue 36, Summer 2005
Gillian Clarke's Making the Beds for the Dead continues with more of what we expect from her: the clarity of her narrative drive, the acute observation of the natural world. read more
Gillian Clarke's Making the Beds for the Dead continues with more of what we expect from her: the clarity of her narrative drive, the acute observation of the natural world. read more
Richard Poole, New Welsh Review , volume 67, spring 2005
Gillian Clarke's new collection is made up of five sequences and twenty-seven poems split into three unequal groups. read more
Gillian Clarke's new collection is made up of five sequences and twenty-seven poems split into three unequal groups. read more
John Scrivener, The Reader , Issue 17, Spring 2005
Where the Future Believes in Itself
Straightaway in this new collection of poems by Gillian Clarke images of close-fitting accuracy arrest your attention: you're made to feel the 'moth-thin pages' of a Bible, or see a woman who, cutting into an apple, 'peels the fruit in a single / ringlet of skin': how exactly this gives us that coil of peel, at once tense and lolling (the single/ringlet repetition mimicking the repeating curls). read more
Where the Future Believes in Itself
Straightaway in this new collection of poems by Gillian Clarke images of close-fitting accuracy arrest your attention: you're made to feel the 'moth-thin pages' of a Bible, or see a woman who, cutting into an apple, 'peels the fruit in a single / ringlet of skin': how exactly this gives us that coil of peel, at once tense and lolling (the single/ringlet repetition mimicking the repeating curls). read more
Reviewed by David Morley in The Guardian , 13th November 2004
All Clarke's books to date have an individual architecture in selection and order, one that requires her readers to grasp the book as a conceptual, even a musical whole. read more
All Clarke's books to date have an individual architecture in selection and order, one that requires her readers to grasp the book as a conceptual, even a musical whole. read more
Reviewed in Planet by Anne Cluysenaar
This is a richly varied collection, remarkable both for its sense of vast perspectives within immediate (often homely) experience and its visceral evocation of current events. read more
This is a richly varied collection, remarkable both for its sense of vast perspectives within immediate (often homely) experience and its visceral evocation of current events. read more
Belinda Cooke, Poetry Ireland Review , Issue 86
Something Endures
In Making Beds for the Dead , Gillian Clarke begins with an explanation of the nature of creativity, of language in particular, a process in which she draws on associations with friends past and present. read more
Something Endures
In Making Beds for the Dead , Gillian Clarke begins with an explanation of the nature of creativity, of language in particular, a process in which she draws on associations with friends past and present. read more
Elizabeth Burns, Orbis magazine, Autumn 2004
At the beginning is a poem about a Vermeer painting, where a woman peels an apple and from it learns about the universe: 'The apple turns / under fixed stars, / Her knife cuts into the Pole...' read more
At the beginning is a poem about a Vermeer painting, where a woman peels an apple and from it learns about the universe: 'The apple turns / under fixed stars, / Her knife cuts into the Pole...' read more
Tim Liardet, North magazine, issue 36, Summer 2005
Gillian Clarke's Making the Beds for the Dead continues with more of what we expect from her: the clarity of her narrative drive, the acute observation of the natural world. read more
Gillian Clarke's Making the Beds for the Dead continues with more of what we expect from her: the clarity of her narrative drive, the acute observation of the natural world. read more
Richard Poole, New Welsh Review , volume 67, spring 2005
Gillian Clarke's new collection is made up of five sequences and twenty-seven poems split into three unequal groups. read more
Gillian Clarke's new collection is made up of five sequences and twenty-seven poems split into three unequal groups. read more
John Scrivener, The Reader , Issue 17, Spring 2005
Where the Future Believes in Itself
Straightaway in this new collection of poems by Gillian Clarke images of close-fitting accuracy arrest your attention: you're made to feel the 'moth-thin pages' of a Bible, or see a woman who, cutting into an apple, 'peels the fruit in a single / ringlet of skin': how exactly this gives us that coil of peel, at once tense and lolling (the single/ringlet repetition mimicking the repeating curls). read more
Where the Future Believes in Itself
Straightaway in this new collection of poems by Gillian Clarke images of close-fitting accuracy arrest your attention: you're made to feel the 'moth-thin pages' of a Bible, or see a woman who, cutting into an apple, 'peels the fruit in a single / ringlet of skin': how exactly this gives us that coil of peel, at once tense and lolling (the single/ringlet repetition mimicking the repeating curls). read more
Reviewed by David Morley in The Guardian , 13th November 2004
All Clarke's books to date have an individual architecture in selection and order, one that requires her readers to grasp the book as a conceptual, even a musical whole. read more
All Clarke's books to date have an individual architecture in selection and order, one that requires her readers to grasp the book as a conceptual, even a musical whole. read more
Reviewed in Planet by Anne Cluysenaar
This is a richly varied collection, remarkable both for its sense of vast perspectives within immediate (often homely) experience and its visceral evocation of current events. read more
This is a richly varied collection, remarkable both for its sense of vast perspectives within immediate (often homely) experience and its visceral evocation of current events. read more
Awards won by Gillian Clarke
Winner, 2011 Acclaimed writer Gillian Clarke has been presented with the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. The honour recognises her body of work which culminated in the collection A Recipie for Water, published in 2009.
Gillian Clarke reads 'The Sundial' (1:34 mins)
An Evening with Gillian Clarke: Part 1 of 3 - Oswestry Festival of the Word 2012 (38:15 mins)
An Evening with Gillian Clarke: Part 2 of 3 - Oswestry Festival of the Word 2012 (28:29 mins)
An Evening with Gillian Clarke: Part 3 of 3 (credits) - Oswestry Festival of the Word 2012 (5:25 mins)
Gillian Clarke's own website can be found at www.gillianclarke.co.uk
We thank the Arts Council England for their support and assistance in this interactive Project.
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