MATTHEW FRANCIS (UK)
Matthew Francis is the author of two volumes of poetry published by Faber and Faber, Blizzard (1996) and Dragons (2001), both of which were shortlisted for the Forward Prize. His work has won the TLS/Blackwell’s Prize and the Southern Arts Literature Prize and he has been selected as one of the Poetry Book Society’s 20 Next Generation Poets. Matthew Francis is also the author of a study of the Scottish poet W.S. Graham, Where the People Are (Salt Publishing, 2004) and editor of his New Collected Poems (Faber and Faber, 2004). He lives in west Wales and is a Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. |
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ABOUT HIS WRITING
“Francis's style is clever ebullient, pacey, often brilliant.”
 Amy Wack, Poetry Wales
"The way in which Francis navigates through the strictures of his form, doubling and tripling meanings as he goes, is not just astonishingly virtuosic but moving: he is a poetic Houdini, escaping into a locked box in order to liberate his subject self.”
David C. Ward, PN Review
"Francis treats some complex material in a lucid, uncluttered way…"
Sean O’Brien, The Sunday Times
"The strength of Francis’s poetry derives from its precise balance between the surreal and the real; he never lets his conceits get out of hand, but uses them to unsettle a predictable view. His directness of language and diction, and a pleasant metrical sense, allow him to smuggle through more disturbing thoughts and ideas, proving himself more than capable of being both accessible and ambitious…"
Robert Potts, The Guardian |
