Sam Gardiner (poet)

Samuel Trevor Gardiner (1936–2016) was a Northern Irish poet. He was born in Portadown, Armagh but lived most of his life in England, living in London through the 1970s and moving north to the Grimsby area in the 80s where he lived out the rest of his life. He first became well known in radical/literary circles as Trevor Gardiner, whilst manager of the Poetry Bureau and later as editor of Poet's Yearbook. Issues in his personal life saw him abandon his London life, and move initially to Cleethorpes. He worked as an architect through the 80s, writing creatively about historic architecture in this time. He came to national attention when he unexpectedly won the National Poetry Competition, which he was presented by Hull poet Sean O'Brien, for his poem Protestant Windows in 1993 which he published almost as an afterthought, under the name Sam Gardiner.

Following the win Sam Gardiner retired to write full time and published new work regularly across British, Irish and international poetry magazines. He was Lincolnshire Millennium Laureate in 1999/2000, and won the Poetry Business pamphlet prize for his 'Picture Never Taken' in 2006. He became a key figure in local poetry circles around his adopted Grimsby, founding long running poetry groups in Louth and Lincoln in the 90s and Hull and Nunsthorpe in the 2000s. After a long period 'under consideration' by Faber, Gardiner became frustrated and embarrassed by the prestigious publisher's failure to make a decision on his first collection, and withdrew his work in the hope he could publish a series of small press pamphlets. Instead he was picked up by Lagan Press who published a series of three long collections over the next 15 years Protestant Windows (2000), Night Ships (2006) and The Morning After (2011). These collections found very strong markets in the UK, Ireland but particularly in the USA. Gardiner continued to publish prolifically in magazines, newspapers and journals. He died in 2016 of COPD.