Career

Oswald read Classics at New College

New College, Oxford

New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.- Overview :The College's official name, College of St Mary, is the same as that of the older Oriel College; hence, it has been referred to as the "New College of St Mary", and is now almost always...

, Oxford, has worked as a gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden, and today lives with her husband, the playwright Peter Oswald

Peter Oswald

Peter Osvald is a well-known English playwright. He is married to the poet Alice Oswald, with whom he has three children. They live in Devon, South West England....

 (also a trained classicist), and her three children in Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

, in the South-West of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.

In 1994, she was the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection of poetry, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile (1996), won a Forward Poetry Prize

Forward Poetry Prize

The Forward Poetry Prizes were created in 1991. The aim of the prizes is to extend the audience for contemporary poetry. Until the T.S. Eliot Prize remuneration was increased to £15,000 plus £1000 to each of nine runners-up, the Forward was the United Kingdom's most valuable annual poetry...

 (Best First Collection) in 1996, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

 Prize in 1997.

Her second collection, Dart (2002), combined verse and prose, which tells the story of the River Dart in Devon from a variety of perspectives. Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson

Jeanette Winterson OBE is a British novelist.-Early years:Winterson was born in Manchester and adopted on 21 January 1960. She was raised in Accrington, Lancashire, by Constance and John William Winterson...

 called it a " … moving, changing poem, as fast-flowing as the river and as deep … a celebration of difference … " . Dart won the T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

 Prize in 2002.

In 2004, Oswald was named as one of the Poetry Book Society

Poetry Book Society

The Poetry Book Society was founded by T. S. Eliot and friends in 1953. Each quarter the Society selects one recently published collection of poetry for its members. The Society also publishes the quarterly poetry journal Bulletin, and it administers the competition for the annual T. S. Eliot Prize...

's Next Generation poets. Her collection Woods etc., published in 2005, was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).

In 2009 she published both A sleepwalk on the Severn and Weeds and Wildflowers, which won the inaugural Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.

In October 2011, Oswald published her 6th collection, Memorial.

Awards and recognition

• 1996
  1996 in poetry
  Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* National Poetry Month was established by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996 as way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States.* The movie Dead Man, written and...
  
  : Eric Gregory Award
  Eric Gregory Award
  The Eric Gregory Award is given by the Society of Authors to British poets under 30 on submission. The awards are up to a sum value of £24000 annually....
  
  
• 1996
  1996 in poetry
  Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* National Poetry Month was established by the Academy of American Poets in April 1996 as way to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry in the United States.* The movie Dead Man, written and...
  
  : Forward Poetry Prize
  Forward Poetry Prize
  The Forward Poetry Prizes were created in 1991. The aim of the prizes is to extend the audience for contemporary poetry. Until the T.S. Eliot Prize remuneration was increased to £15,000 plus £1000 to each of nine runners-up, the Forward was the United Kingdom's most valuable annual poetry...
  
   for (Best First Collection), The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile
• 1997
  1997 in poetry
  Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:*January 20 — Miller Williams of Arkansas reads his poem, "Of History and Hope," at President Clinton's inauguration....
  
  : shortlisted for T. S. Eliot Prize
  T. S. Eliot Prize
  The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in...
  
  , for The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile
• 2002
  2002 in poetry
  Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* After Ghazi al-Gosaibi, the Saudi Arabian ambassador to Britain, publishes a poem praising a suicide bomber who had killed himself and two Israelis after blowing himself up in a supermarket; the...
  
  : T. S. Eliot Prize
  T. S. Eliot Prize
  The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in...
  
   for Dart
• 2005
  2005 in poetry
  Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* October 7 — Celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the first reading of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl were staged in San Francisco, New York City, and in Leeds in the UK...
  
  : shortlisted for Forward Poetry Prize
  Forward Poetry Prize
  The Forward Poetry Prizes were created in 1991. The aim of the prizes is to extend the audience for contemporary poetry. Until the T.S. Eliot Prize remuneration was increased to £15,000 plus £1000 to each of nine runners-up, the Forward was the United Kingdom's most valuable annual poetry...
  
   (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) for Woods etc.
• 2005
  2005 in poetry
  Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* October 7 — Celebrations marking the 50th anniversary of the first reading of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl were staged in San Francisco, New York City, and in Leeds in the UK...
  
  : shortlisted for T. S. Eliot Prize
  T. S. Eliot Prize
  The T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry is awarded by the Poetry Book Society to "the best collection of new verse in English first published in the UK or the Republic of Ireland" in any particular year. The Prize was inaugurated in 1993 in celebration of the Poetry Book Society's 40th birthday and in...
  
   for Woods etc.
• 2007
  2007 in poetry
  Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* March 5: a car bomb was exploded on Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad. More than 30 people were killed and more than 100 were wounded. This locale is the historic center of Baghdad bookselling, a winding...
  
  : Forward Poetry Prize
  Forward Poetry Prize
  The Forward Poetry Prizes were created in 1991. The aim of the prizes is to extend the audience for contemporary poetry. Until the T.S. Eliot Prize remuneration was increased to £15,000 plus £1000 to each of nine runners-up, the Forward was the United Kingdom's most valuable annual poetry...
  
   (Best Single Poem) for 'Dunt'
• 2009
  2009 in poetry
  Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* January 5 – The Turkish government announces it will posthumously restore the citizenship it had stripped from influential poet Nazim Hikmet, a Marxist who died in 1963 as an exile in the Soviet...
  
  : Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for Weeds and Wild Flowers

External links

• Contemporarywriters.com Alice Oswald - Biography and Analysis of her Works
• London Review of Books Review of Woods etc by Aingeal Clare.
• Guardian article 30 March 2010 Alice Oswald wins inaugural Ted Hughes award accessed 2010-03-31
• Guardian article featuring Oswald's poem Thrift 31 March 2010 accessed 2010-03-31