WIN $150 GIFT VOUCHERS: ALADDIN'S GOLD
Clare Shaw was born in Burnley in 1972. Their first two collections with Bloodaxe wereStraight Ahead(2006), which attracted a Forward Prize Highly Commended for Best Single Poem, andHead On(2012), which according to theTimes Literary Supplementis 'fierce, memorable and visceral'. Their later collections areFlood(2018), a New Writing North Read Regional title in 2019, andTowards a General Theory of Love(2022) which won a Northern Writers' Award and was a Poetry Society Book of the Year.
'The energy and vivacity of Clare Shaw's writing, its colloquial power, frame of reference and sheer sound is enough to mark her out as one of the most talented young poets to appear in recent years. Hers is a natural gift that speaks as it sings. It confronts the world with knowledge, pity, melancholy, affection and a kind of sympathetic fury, as if the world were shards and fragments that could be gathered into the ear and sung from the heart. And the remarkable thing is that she does gather it and sing it, that she imbues it with the passion owing to it' - George Szirtes. 'Hold your breath when you read Clare Shaw's poems. Startling, searing, scorching, this is an emotional blast of a book' - Jackie Kay.
