Oswald, Alice

(1966- )

   Oswald lives with her husband and two children at Dartington in Devon, where she works as a gardener on the Dartington Estate. To write her second collection of poetry, called simply Dart (2002), she spent three years collecting information about the river and talking to people who use the river in their daily lives. "They include a poacher, a ferryman, a sewage worker and milk worker, a forester, swimmers and canoeists-and are interlinked with historic and mythic voices, drowned voices, dreaming voices and marginal notes which act as markers along the way" (The Times, 27 July 2002). In 2004, Alice Oswald was named one of the Poetry Book Society's "Next Generation" poets. She has received several prizes and awards and has been short listed for other awards. She has also been called Ted Hughes' rightful heir. Some of her other publications: The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, 1996. The Thunder Mutters: 101 Poems for the Planet, 2005; Woods, 2005. Some of her poems: "Ballad of a Shadow," "Mountains," "Sea Sonnet," "The Melon Grower," "The PilchardCuring Song," "Wedding."

   Sources: BBC - Get Writing - A2997886 - Alice Oswald (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/getwriting/oswald). Making for Planet Alice: New Women Poets. Maura Dooley, ed. Bloodaxe Books, 1997. River Dart- Alice Oswald (http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/places/river.htm). 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 Book of Sonnets. John Fuller, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.