Simon Smith

Simon Smith’s most recent full-length collection of poems is entitled 11781 W. Sunset Boulevard (Shearsman Books, 2014). Four earlier full-length collections are: Fifteen Exits, Reverdy Road, Mercury (long-listed for the Costa Prize in 2007), and London Bridge. His entry in The Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry states, ‘Reverdy Road and Mercury are book-length sequences of short, epigrammatic lyrics which pick up and redistribute the language and life-world of modern London with a Raworthian lightness.’ In 2009 he was a Hawthornden Writing Fellow; and was a judge of the National Poetry Competition in 2004. He is currently working on several projects relating to the oeuvre of American poet Paul Blackburn, and a translation of Catullus is due for publication with Carcanet in England in 2017.

Smith is Director of Creative Writing in the School of English at the University of Kent, England, where he has taught since 2006. Previously he worked at The Poetry Library in London from 1991-2007, and he was its Librarian from 2003 until 2007. Since 2010, Smith has worked on collaborative poetry and music projects with Jamie Telford, David Herd, Sam Bailey, Jack Hues and The-Quartet, Matt Wright and Evan Parker. He is a co-founder of Sounds New Poetry Festival.