Clare Shaw has four poetry collections with Bloodaxe. Their latest collection Towards a General Theory of Love was awarded a Northern Writer’s Award, and was published in May 2022. Clare is Co-Director of the Kendal Poetry Festival and a regular tutor for Wordsworth Grasmere and the Arvon Foundation.

Clare is widely published in anthologies, such as Faber’s 100 Queer Poems (2022). They have written and presented poetry, drama and documentaries on BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4; and they work in collaboration with artists and academics across wide-ranging genres. In 2022, Clare wrote the libretto for the opera “Daylighting” which premiered at the Royal Academy for Music. In 2019, they were a judge for the final Ted Hughes Award which celebrated new poetic work beyond the conventional realms of poetry.

With a background in mental health and education, Clare is a keen advocate for writing as a tool of social and personal change. They work tirelessly to engage new audiences with poetry, and as Project Lead for the Royal Literary Fund, were responsible for setting up writing projects in workplaces across the UK. Clare was the resident poet for Lancashire Wildlife Trust in 2021 and they continue to use poetry to engage communities with wildlife and ecology. In collaboration with the novelist Winnie M Li, Clare was the recipient of a Royal Society of Literature Literature Matters Award in 2019, creating workshops and a free online resource for survivors of trauma: available via this link:

http://clearlines.org.uk/our-free-creative-writing-guide-for-survivors-available-here/

FREE EVENT

---