Carcanet Press - Andrew Wynn Owen

About
Reviews
Awards

Andrew Wynn Owen’s first collection, The Multiverse, was published in 2018. He received the Newdigate Prize in 2014 and an Eric Gregory Award in 2015.

'It was a tall order to follow the astonishing combination of formal control and conceptual openness of Andrew Wynn Owen's acclaimed debut volume The Multiverse. But Infinite in Finite is just as exhilarating and as imaginatively rich as its predecessor. It is hard to think of a poet of our time with greater reach and talent or a collection of poems of such sheer interest and quiet wit.'
Bernard O'Donoghue
'This is a vibrant collection by a fine young poet, full of energy and wit. It explores belief in God, love, life and the power and obstructiveness of language, how we know and what we know. It does all this in tightly rhymed stanzas.'
Jonathan Timbers, The High Window
'My favourite collection of 2023 was Andrew Wynn Owen's Infinite in Finite for its combination of technical adeptness and emotional heft. It is a joy.'
John Clegg, London Review Bookshop
'This is precision-engineered rhymed verse. At first glance it looks old-fashioned, as does some of the vocabulary - "go forth" - but we soon realise that rhyme itself operates as a limit, a finite, which can paradoxically lead to an infinite, as it echoes into the distance. It is this that enables Owen to link the two traditions, and to find the infinite not in a god, but in that which we recognise through the senses: love, animals, clouds, rewilding, and in the making that is poetry and art.'
Philip Terry, The Guardian
'It will be interesting to see where Andrew Wynn Owen goes next. A very young poet with some of the best technical skills of any living poet, one who is not afraid of big subjects, whose enthusiastic gaze is directed outward with energy and gladness, who writes of science and technology with some expertise, who has, well, considerable gifts, is definitely someone who bears close watching.'

Robert Darling, Expansive Poetry Online
'There is a lightness that supplants the density of the grand themes however, that sometimes borders on the audacious with an Ashbery-like skill to impart the acerbic or casual aphorism where it's least expected.'
Liam Bishop, Review 31
'He has an almost miraculous ear for the sounds of words and their harmonies together. There is bounding vitality, surgical precision and coquettish wit in every stanza.'
Richard Davenport-Hines, The Spectator Books of the Year

'Andrew Wynn Owen's impressive debut collection has the crafted confidence of a poet who has inherited the stylistic techniques of Auden, Hardy, Herbert and all those forebears who placed their trust in poetry's lyrical birthright. The shapes and structures of intricately patterned verse feel like a natural form of expression for Wynn Owen, prompting and provoking a flexibility of language and a fluidity of thought appropriate to the bewildering and beguiling multiplicities of our contemporary world. Within those controlled outlines he showcases an extraordinary versatility of tone and feeling.'

- Simon Armitage

'To enter Andrew Wynn Owen's The Multiverse is to enter a world ringing with harmonic patterning, where past and close future are active simultaneously, where rhyme gathers and spins off the edges of intricate thought, where observation and meditation fire together with striking formal ease and precision. Hard to believe this is really a first full collection.'

- Jane Draycott

'Never once forbidding, the poems in The Multiverse still add up to something overwhelming. Wynn Owen's voice - unstrained, and pitched just this side of formality - emerges through prismatic formal shifts of poem after poem, making the book an exuberant expression of what Yeats called imagination's 'abounding glittering jet'. So completely attuned to the happy (and unhappy) accidents of experience and knowledge, these poems are far from accidental affairs, and their fixed and fluid shapes combine the prodigal verve of George Herbert's stanzas with a Byronic bounce and the unnerving authority of the young Auden or Lowell. This is poetry that shimmers and fizzes, but Wynn Owen's effortless superabundance, in imagery, style, and formal invention, concentrates rather than diffuses an undaunted, hyper-alert and profound sense of the world's weight.'

- Peter McDonald

'A remarkable display of formal dexterity through which a wide sweep of thought is captured.'

- Daljit Nagra

'an Ashbery-like skill to impart the acerbic or casual aphorism where it's least expected'
Liam Bishop, Review 31

'Inspired, delighted, and exhausted me.'

- Richard Davenport-Hines

'Andrew Wynn Owen's virtuosic exploration of the variable resources of stanza form is a timely reminder (in a period of relative non-thinking in poetry) of all the ways in which the mind can engage with metrical language. These exhilarating poems bob, weave and dazzle in ways that we are used to in the best intellectual poets of the 17th century. And while Wynn Owen is unafraid to probe complex questions thrown up by science and philosophy, at the heart of his poetry is a redeeming and infectious love of life: above all, the poems in this big important book are lucid, eloquent and joyful.'
- John Fuller

Awards won by Andrew Wynn Owen Winner, 2015 Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors Winner, 2014 Oxford University's Newdigate Prize

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Andrew Wynn Owen Books by this author: Infinite in Finite The Multiverse About Reviews Awards Andrew Wynn Owen’s first collection, The Multiverse, was published in 2018. He received the Newdigate Prize in 2014 and an Eric Gregory Award in 2015. 'It was a tall order to follow the astonishing combination of formal control and conceptual openness of Andrew Wynn Owen's acclaimed debut volume The Multiverse. But Infinite in Finite is just as exhilarating and as imaginatively rich as its predecessor. It is hard to think of a poet of our time with greater reach and talent or a collection of poems of such sheer interest and quiet wit.' Bernard O'Donoghue 'This is a vibrant collection by a fine young poet, full of energy and wit. It explores belief in God, love, life and the power and obstructiveness of language, how we know and what we know. It does all this in tightly rhymed stanzas.' Jonathan Timbers, The High Window 'My favourite collection of 2023 was Andrew Wynn Owen's Infinite in Finite for its combination of technical adeptness and emotional heft. It is a joy.' John Clegg, London Review Bookshop 'This is precision-engineered rhymed verse. At first glance it looks old-fashioned, as does some of the vocabulary - "go forth" - but we soon realise that rhyme itself operates as a limit, a finite, which can paradoxically lead to an infinite, as it echoes into the distance. It is this that enables Owen to link the two traditions, and to find the infinite not in a god, but in that which we recognise through the senses: love, animals, clouds, rewilding, and in the making that is poetry and art.' Philip Terry, The Guardian 'It will be interesting to see where Andrew Wynn Owen goes next. A very young poet with some of the best technical skills of any living poet, one who is not afraid of big subjects, whose enthusiastic gaze is directed outward with energy and gladness, who writes of science and technology with some expertise, who has, well, considerable gifts, is definitely someone who bears close watching.' Robert Darling, Expansive Poetry Online 'There is a lightness that supplants the density of the grand themes however, that sometimes borders on the audacious with an Ashbery-like skill to impart the acerbic or casual aphorism where it's least expected.' Liam Bishop, Review 31 'He has an almost miraculous ear for the sounds of words and their harmonies together. There is bounding vitality, surgical precision and coquettish wit in every stanza.' *Richard Davenport-Hines, The Spectator* Books of the Year 'Andrew Wynn Owen's impressive debut collection has the crafted confidence of a poet who has inherited the stylistic techniques of Auden, Hardy, Herbert and all those forebears who placed their trust in poetry's lyrical birthright. The shapes and structures of intricately patterned verse feel like a natural form of expression for Wynn Owen, prompting and provoking a flexibility of language and a fluidity of thought appropriate to the bewildering and beguiling multiplicities of our contemporary world. Within those controlled outlines he showcases an extraordinary versatility of tone and feeling.' - Simon Armitage** 'To enter Andrew Wynn Owen's The Multiverse is to enter a world ringing with harmonic patterning, where past and close future are active simultaneously, where rhyme gathers and spins off the edges of intricate thought, where observation and meditation fire together with striking formal ease and precision. Hard to believe this is really a first full collection.' - Jane Draycott 'Never once forbidding, the poems in The Multiverse still add up to something overwhelming. Wynn Owen's voice - unstrained, and pitched just this side of formality - emerges through prismatic formal shifts of poem after poem, making the book an exuberant expression of what Yeats called imagination's 'abounding glittering jet'. So completely attuned to the happy (and unhappy) accidents of experience and knowledge, these poems are far from accidental affairs, and their fixed and fluid shapes combine the prodigal verve of George Herbert's stanzas with a Byronic bounce and the unnerving authority of the young Auden or Lowell. This is poetry that shimmers and fizzes, but Wynn Owen's effortless superabundance, in imagery, style, and formal invention, concentrates rather than diffuses an undaunted, hyper-alert and profound sense of the world's weight.' - Peter McDonald 'A remarkable display of formal dexterity through which a wide sweep of thought is captured.' - Daljit Nagra 'an Ashbery-like skill to impart the acerbic or casual aphorism where it's least expected' Liam Bishop, Review 31 'Inspired, delighted, and exhausted me.' - Richard Davenport-Hines 'Andrew Wynn Owen's virtuosic exploration of the variable resources of stanza form is a timely reminder (in a period of relative non-thinking in poetry) of all the ways in which the mind can engage with metrical language. These exhilarating poems bob, weave and dazzle in ways that we are used to in the best intellectual poets of the 17th century. And while Wynn Owen is unafraid to probe complex questions thrown up by science and philosophy, at the heart of his poetry is a redeeming and infectious love of life: above all, the poems in this big important book are lucid, eloquent and joyful.' - John Fuller Awards won by Andrew Wynn Owen Winner, 2015 Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors Winner, 2014 Oxford University's Newdigate Prize	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more
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