Clanchy, Kate

(1965- )

   Born in Glasgow, Scotland, she was educated in Edinburgh and Oxford. She lived in London's East End for several years before moving to Oxford, where she now works as a teacher, journalist and freelance writer. Her poetry features regularly in magazines and in The Scotsman, the New Statesman and Poetry Review. She also writes for radio and broadcasts on the World Service and BBC Radio 3 and 4. She teaches creative writing at the Arvon Foundation (with centers in various parts of Britain), and was poet in residence for the Red Cross in the U.K. as part of the Poetry Society's Poetry Places scheme. She was a member of the new Images writers' exchange to Australia, organized by the British Council and the Arts Council of England. Her collection Slattern (1995) won four major literary awards and Samarkand (1999) won the 1999 Scottish Arts Council Book Award. Some of her poems: "Deadman's Shoes," "For a Wedding," "Foreign," "Love," "On Breast-Feeding," "One Night When We Paused Half-Way," "Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell," "Recognition," "Rejoice in the Lamb."

   Sources: All the Poems You Need to Say Hello by Kate Clanchy. Picador, 2004. British Council Arts (http://www.contemporarywriters.com). Kate Clanchy, Poem for a Man with No Sense of Smell (http://www.thepoem.co.uk/poems/clanchy.htm). Making for Planet Alice: New Women Poets. Maura Dooley, ed. Bloodaxe Books, 1997. Newborn, by Kate Clanchy -poems covering pregnancy, birth and caring for a new baby. Picador, 2005. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.