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Fiona Sampson

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  • Fiona Sampson has published fifteen books - including poetry, philosophy of language and studies of writing process - of which the most recent are: Rough Music (Carcanet 2010) and Common Prayer (Carcanet 2007, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, poem shortlisted for a Forward Prize) and Writing: Self and Reflexivity (with Celia Hunt; Macmillan, 2005). She has been widely translated, with eight books in translation including Patuvachki Dnevnik (Travel Diary), awarded the Zlaten Prsten (Macedonia). She has received the Newdigate Prize, writers' awards from the Arts Councils of England and Wales and the Society of Authors and, in, the United States, the Literary Review's Charles Angoff Award. 'Trumpeldor Beach' was shortlisted for the 2006 Forward Prize for best single poem. She was educated at the Universities of Oxford and Nijmegen and has a PhD in the philosophy of language. She was Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Fellow at Oxford Brookes University from 2002-2005. Fiona Sampson is internationally recognised for her pioneering residencies in health care and contributes to the Guardian, the Irish Times and other publications. Her translations include Jaan Kaplinski, an anthology of younger Central European poets, and Orient Express, of which she was founding editor. She has been the editor of Poetry Review since 2005. She gave the 2010 Newcastle Poetry Lectures under the title 'Music Lessons'. In 2009, she received a Cholmondeley Award and became a Fellow of the Royal Society for Literature.




    Fiona Sampson has a page on the Poetry Archive website, where you can listen to recordings of her poetry and access other useful resources. Click here.


    Fiona Sampson is acutely conscious of the physical self through space and time. read more
    After Fiona Sampson's previous volume of poems, Common Prayer (Carcanet, 2007), with its extraordinary fusing of the numinous, the erotic and close - but never exploitative - study of suffering, readers will have eagerly awaited the book that follows, Rough Music . They will not be disappointed. read more
    Rough Music , the title of Fiona Sampson's new collection, is the name given to the old English custom of scapegoating. read more
    Rough Music , the title of Fiona Sampson's new collection, is the name given to the old English custom of scapegoating. read more
    The creative tug-of- war in British poetry between experimental freedom and the ancient delights of ballad and song, where the lyrics cohere with the end-rhyme is very old. read more
    Fiona Sampson's impressive Rough Music is different again, working with fresh-peeled vividness to get at the quick of experience as it happens. read more
    The Irish Times 'Around the fountain, in the right room' by Enda Wyley Fiona Sampson’s new collection, Rough Music , takes its title from the old English custom of scapegoating and, at her best, these are poems which share with Glück a directness, an honesty of expression which is compelling. read more
    The Times The title of this new collection of poetry refers to an old English custom of public scapegoating.  read more
    In a round table chaired by Poetry Review in the 1960s and entitled 'Why publish poetry?', read more
    With the handover of the laureateship, the Oxford poetry professorship debacle, the 30th anniversary of Radio 4's Poetry Please and a major promotion on BBC television, poetry has been much in the news this year. read more
    'Her poems teem with events that won’t hold still...' read more
    Fiona Sampson burst on to the literary landscape as the brilliant young editor of Poetry Review a couple of years ago. read more
    'Is it our job to disguise the black God in the sheep's clothing of the Good Shepherd Eros?' read more
    'I lob stones,' says the speaker in 'Messiaen's Piano', the opening poem in Fiona Sampson's Common Prayer . In a collection intensely preoccupied with the challenges of form, with its fragile yet dogged conditions, the stones suggest stanzas and syllables; the act of lobbing them, poetry itself. read more
    The poems in Common Prayer give evidence of a sensibility faced in several unlikely-seeming directions at once: erotic and philosophical, internationalist and Christian, bookish and compulsively image-making. read more
    'I lob stones,' says the speaker in 'Messiaen's Piano', the opening poem in Fiona Sampson's Common Prayer . In a collection intensely preoccupied with the challenges of form, with its fragile yet dogged conditions, the stones suggest stanzas and syllables; the act of lobbing them, poetry itself. read more
    With Common Prayer , Fiona Sampson moves decisively from promise to fulfilment. read more
    Fiona Sampson left school at 16 to become a professional violinist; she is now a formidable figure on the poetry, rather than the music, scene. read more
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