Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald (born 1966) is an English poet.

Oswald read Classics at New College, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon, in the South of England.

In 1994 she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996) won a Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 1997.

Her second collection is Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, which tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson called it a '… moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep … a celebration of difference …' ("The Times", 27 July 2002). Dart won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002.

In 2004, Alice Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society's Next Generation poets. Her latest collection, Woods etc., was published in 2005, and was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).

Works

* 1996: "The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile", Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-282513-5
* 2002: "Dart", Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-21410-X
* 2002: "Earth Has Not Any Thing to Shew More Fair: A Bicentennial Celebration of Wordsworth's Sonnet Composed upon Westminster Bridge" (co-edited with Peter Oswald and Robert Woof), Shakespeare's Globe & The Wordsworth Trust, ISBN 1-870787-84-6
* 2005: "The Thunder Mutters: 101 Poems for the Planet" (editor), Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-21854-7
* 2005: "Woods etc.". Faber and Faber, ISBN 0-571-21852-0

Awards and recognition

* 1996: Eric Gregory Award
* 1996: Forward Poetry Prize for (Best First Collection), "The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile"
* 1997: shortlisted for T. S. Eliot Prize, for "The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile"
* 2002: T. S. Eliot Prize for "Dart"
* 2005: shortlisted for Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) for "Woods etc."
* 2005: shortlisted for T. S. Eliot Prize for " Woods etc."
* 2007: Forward Poetry Prize (Best Single Poem) for 'Dunt'

External links

* [http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=authD4F18F621142f1DB24JmT18BD533 Contemporarywriters.com] Alice Oswald - Biography and Analysis of her Works
* [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/clar08_.html] "London Review of Books Review" of "Woods etc" by Aingeal Clare.