Gillian Clarke

One of Elif Shafak’s selected writers for the International Literature Showcase

“A towering figure in Welsh literature, Gillian Clarke’s poetry is simultaneously haunting and immediate, shifting between languages in its exploration of the local and the global, doing so with a fierce music.” – Elif Shafak

<< Explore Elif’s list of great UK women writers

Welsh poet, broadcaster, playwright, conserver of eighteen beautiful Ceredigion acres

Cardiff-born, lives in Ceredigion. Awarded the Queen’s Gold medal for Poetry in 2010, the Wilfred Owen Award in 2012, her poetry has been on the British and international exam syllabus for forty years. Other works: a writer’s journal, At the Source; translations of Welsh poetry and prose; radio and theatre drama. The Gathering, commissioned by the National Theatre of Wales, was performed in 2014. Recent work: Selected Poems, Picador, 2016; her tenth collection, Zoology, Carcanet, 2017. Her version of the book-long 7th century Welsh poem, Y Gododdin, appears from Faber in 2020.

‘Gillian Clarke is one of the most widely respected and deeply loved poets in the world.’ – Carol Ann Duffy

‘Gillian Clarke’s [poems] ring with lucidity and power… Clarke’s work is both personal and archetypal, built out of language as concrete as it is musical.’ –Times Literary Supplement

‘How hard it is to write such poems, how easy to enjoy them.’ – Poetry Review

“Proud to put Wales – national art, poetry – on the international stage” – Gillian