Carol Rumens

Carol Rumens was born on 10 December 1944 in Forest Hill, South London.

She won a scholarship to grammar school and later studied Philosophy at London University, but left before completing her degree. She gained a Postgraduate Diploma in Writing for the Stage (with Distinction) from Manchester City College in 2001. The posts she has held include Writer in Residence, University of Kent at Canterbury (1983-5); Northern Arts Literary Fellow (1988-90); Poet in Residence, Queen’s University, Belfast (1991-3) and University College Cork (1994); Writer in Residence for the British Council, University of Stockholm (Spring 1999); She is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Hull.

Her first poetry collection, A Strange Girl in Bright Colours, was published in 1973. Other collections include Unplayed Music (1981), joint winner of the Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize; Star Whisper (1983); Direct Dialling (1985); The Greening of the Snow Beach (1988), inspired by a visit to Moscow; From Berlin to Heaven (1989); and Holding Pattern (1998), shortlisted for the Belfast Arts Award for Literature, in which she wrote about her experiences living in Northern Ireland. Recent poetry titles are Hex (2002) and a Selected Poems: 1968-2004 (2004).She is the author of a novel, Plato Park (1987), the story of a love affair between a Russian journalist and an English woman. Carol Rumens is a member of the Society of Authors. Writing Poetry was published in 2006 and Self into Song, a book of lectures given at Newcastle University, in 2007. Her most recent poetry collections are Blind Spots (2008) and De Chirico’s Threads (2010).