About Gillian Clarke
Gillian Clarke (born 8 June 1937, in Cardiff) is a Welsh poet and playwright. She has published ten collections of poetry for adults, written radio and theater plays and translated poetry and prose from Welsh into English. The publication of her first collection of poetry “The Sundial” in 1978 announced her arrival as a significant new voice in the world of Welsh letters. Her book “Ice” was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2012. Her work is widely anthologized, and her poetry forms part of the school syllabus in Britain. Clarke version of the book-long 7th century Welsh poem, “Y Gododdin”, was published by Faber in 2021. A new book of essays and a journal, “Roots Home”, has been published by Carcarnet in 2021, and she currently has a work-in-progress, a collection of poems, with the working title “The Silence”. In 2008, Clarke became the third National Poet Laureate of Wales. She held this position until 2016, when she was succeeded by Ifor ap Glyn. In 2010, she was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, becoming the second Welsh person to receive this honor, and received also the Wilfred Owen Award in 2012.Her poetry is studied by GCSE and A-level students throughout the UK. A considerable number of her poems are used in the GCSE AQA Anthology. She has given poetry readings and lectures in Europe and the US; her work has been translated into ten languages. Some of her poems in English have been translated into Chinese by Peter Jingcheng Xu and published in the journal Foreign Literature and Art (issue 6, December 2016). Clarke has also published numerous drama commissions and articles in a wide range of publications. She is a former editor of The Anglo-Welsh Review (1975–84) and the current president of Ty Newydd, a writers' centre in North Wales, which She co-founded with Sally Baker in 1990. Several of her books have received a recommendation from the Poetry Book Society. In 1999, Gillian Clarke received the Glyndwr Award for “Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Wales” at the Machynlleth Festival. She was a judge for the 2008 Manchester Poetry Prize. Clarke reads her poetry to teenagers taking their GCSE English school exams. She is part of the GCSE Poetry Live team, which also includes John Agard, Simon Armitage, and Carol Ann Duffy. In December 2013, Clarke was a guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs program. She has written over 100 poems during her career. Clarke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2000. In 2011, Clarke joined the Gorsedd of Bards. In 2012, she received the Wilfred Owen's Association Poetry Prize.
Browse all poems and texts published on Gillian Clarke
