Michael Laskey
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Michael George Laskey (born 15 August 1944) is a poet and editor, Chairman of The Poetry Trust.
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[edit] Education
Laskey was educated at Gresham's School and St John's College, Cambridge, where he read English.
[edit] Career
After Cambridge, Laskey worked for ten years as a teacher in secondary schools and further education in Spain and England.
In 1989, he founded the international Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and served as its director for ten years. He is now the Festival's chairman.
In 1991, with Roy Blackman he founded the poetry magazine Smiths Knoll, and since 2002 has edited it (with Joanna Cutts).
Laskey now teaches creative writing at the University of East Anglia and also works for the Arvon Foundation, the Open College of the Arts, and in schools.
He has published three poetry collections and two pamphlets.
In 2005 he was awarded an Arts Council International Writing Fellowship at the Banff Centre in Canada.
[edit] Publications as Poet
- Cloves of Garlic (1988) (which won the Poetry Business Pamphlet Competition)
- Thinking of Happiness (Peterloo, 1991) (Poetry Book Society Recommendation)
- The Tightrope Wedding (Smith/Doorstop, 1999) (Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize)
- In the Fruit Cage (1997)
- The Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Anthology 1989-1998 (ed.)
(Aldeburgh Poetry Trust, 1999)
- Permission to Breathe (Smith/Doorstop, 2004)
[edit] As Editor
- The Difference by Anthony Wilson (Aldeburgh Poetry Trust, 1999)
- The Watermen by Roy Blackman (Smiths Knoll, 2003)
- A Small Sun by Mourid Barghouti (Aldeburgh Poetry Trust, 2003)
- Irresistible to Women by Dean Parkin (Garlic Press, 2003)
- Football on Waste Ground by Richard Kemp (Smiths Knoll, 2006)
[edit] Appointments
- Chairman of The Poetry Trust
[edit] Family
Laskey is married to a general practitioner, and they have three sons. Since 1978, they have lived in Suffolk.
[edit] Sources
Michael Laskey - official site
