CAROL RUMENS was born in South London in 1944. Blessed and knocked about, she somehow wrote fourteen books of acclaimed poetry, as well as translations from the Russian. She was a Director of the Philip Larkin Centre at the University of Hull, and has been poet-in-residence in Newcastle, Durham, Belfast,  Stockholm and University College Cork. (Her biography sounds like poetry.) She has kids and has suffered her losses. She is currently Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Bangor University, Wales.


“She is an English poet, a European poet, whose imagination goes beyond the borders of Europe. Her poetry is densely peopled, clamorous with voices, furious and with an edge of hilarious clarity . . . the bravado, the assurance of the beautiful but damned, philosophical, playful, with umpteen forms expertly managed.” —Times Literary Supplement