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Alison Brackenbury

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Alison Brackenbury
Born1953 (age 71–72)
Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, England, UK
AwardsEric Gregory Award, Cholmondeley Award

Alison Brackenbury (born 1953[1]) is a British poet. She has published ten full-length collections of poetry and two selected volumes, as well as reviews, articles, and radio broadcasts. She has won the Eric Gregory Award and the Cholmondeley Award.

Life

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Brackenbury was born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire and attended the local village school and then Brigg High School.[2] She studied English at St Hugh's College, Oxford.[1] Since leaving Oxford, she has lived in Gloucestershire.[3][4]

In the late 1970s and the 1980s, Brackenbury worked as a librarian in a technical college and as a clerical assistant. From 1990 to 2012, when she retired, she was a director, bookkeeper, and manual worker in her family's metal finishing firm.[1][3]

Career

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Brackenbury's first collection, Dreams of Power, was published by Carcanet Press in 1981.[5] It was selected as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.[6] In 1982, it won an Eric Gregory Award, given for collections by poets under the age of thirty.[7]

Between 1985 and 1995, Carcanet published three new collections by Brackenbury, plus a Selected Poems in 1991.[5] In 1997, Brackenbury won a Cholmondeley Award, given each year to four distinguished poets.[8]

Brackenbury published four further collections with Carcanet between 2000 and 2016.[5][9][10][11] In 2019, Carcanet published a second volume of selected poems, Gallop.[12]

Brackenbury's most recent collection was Thorpeness, in 2022.[13]

Brackenbury's work has appeared in many journals, including the Kenyon Review,[14] Ploughshares,[15] Stand,[16] and PN Review, where she has been published multiple times since her first appearance in 1980.[17][18][19] Her poetry has also been broadcast on BBC radio.[1]

Brackenbury's other published and broadcast work includes articles and reviews on poetry, the arts, and English and British folk song,[3][1][2] and a memoir of her grandmother, Aunt Margaret's Pudding, which includes recipes and poems.[20]

In 2019, Brackenbury selected poems for and introduced the Candlestick Press anthology Ten Poems about Horses.[21]

Awards

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Works

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Books

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  • Dreams of Power. Carcanet New Press. 1981. ISBN 978-0-85635-352-9.
  • Breaking Ground. Carcanet. 1985. ISBN 978-0-85635-503-5.
  • Christmas Roses. Carcanet. 1988. ISBN 978-0-85635-750-3.
  • Selected Poems. Carcanet. 1991. ISBN 978-0-85635-924-8.
  • 1829. Carcanet. 1995. ISBN 978-1-85754-122-9.
  • After Beethoven. Carcanet. 2000. ISBN 978-1-85754-454-1.
  • The Story of Sigurd. The Gruffyground Press. 2003. ISBN 0905572262.
  • Bricks and Ballads. Carcanet. 2004. ISBN 978-1-85754-751-1.
  • Singing in the Dark. Carcanet. 2008. ISBN 978-1-85754-914-0.
  • Shadow. HappenStance. 2009. ISBN 978-1-905939-35-0.
  • Then. Carcanet. 2013. ISBN 978-1847771186.
  • Skies. Carcanet. 2016. ISBN 978-1784101800.
  • Aunt Margaret's Pudding. HappenStance. 2018. ISBN 978-1910131435.
  • Gallop: Selected Poems. Carcanet. 2019. ISBN 978-1784106959.
  • Thorpeness. Carcanet. 2022. ISBN 978-1800172258.

Select journal publications

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e Alison Brackenbury | poetryarchive.org Retrieved 2018-02-14.
  2. ^ a b "About Alison Brackenbury". Alison Brackenbury: poet. Archived from the original on 9 May 2008. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  3. ^ a b c "Alison Brackenbury Papers". University of Manchester John Rylands Research Institute and Library. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  4. ^ "The Chimaera, October 2007: Alison Brackenbury". www.the-chimaera.com. Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  5. ^ a b c "Alison Brackenbury". Poetry Book Society. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  6. ^ a b "Alison Brackenbury". Carcanet. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  7. ^ a b "Eric Gregory Awards". Society of Authors. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  8. ^ a b "Cholmondeley Awards". Society of Authors. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  9. ^ "At home with the horses". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  10. ^ "'Leap Year'". The TLS. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  11. ^ "Skies by Alison Brackenbury review – accumulated wisdom". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  12. ^ "Review: Gallop by Alison Brackenbury". Spear's. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  13. ^ "Poem of the week: Woods, and Us by Alison Brackenbury". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  14. ^ Brackenbury, Alison (1995). "Alison Brackenbury". The Kenyon Review. 17 (3/4): 77–78. JSTOR 4337249.
  15. ^ "Read By Author | Ploughshares". www.pshares.org. Retrieved 11 April 2016.
  16. ^ Stand. 1970.
  17. ^ "Letter to no-one". PN Review. 16 (7.2). November–December 1980.
  18. ^ "'So' and other poems". PN Review. 219 (41.1). September–October 2014.
  19. ^ "Poems, Authors - B". PN Review. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  20. ^ "Alison Brackenbury". Literature Works. Retrieved 10 February 2025.
  21. ^ Brackenbury, Alison, ed. (2019). Ten Poems about Horses. Candlestick Press. p. 20. ISBN 9781907598791.
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