The poet, playwright, teacher, lecturer, editor, and translator Gillian Clarke was born in Cardiff in 1937. She is considered an integral figure in contemporary Welsh poetry, leading her to become the third National Poet of Wales in 2008 and the second Welsh poet to receive the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010. She also joined the Gorsedd of Bards (a society of Welsh-language poets) in 2011 and received the Wilfred Owen Association Poetry award in 2012. The Welsh landscape provides the physical and emotional topography in many of her poems, though some are set in other geographical locations. Though Clarke primarily writes in English, she intersperses Welsh words and echoes Welsh poetic traditions and rhythms throughout her work.
Clarke focuses on a blend of personal, political, historical, and mythological moments, and nature plays an essential role in her poems. As an interviewer in Luxembourg Review writes, Clarke's works are "emotionally laden with feminism, politics, life events, and are heavily centered around the theme of Place." Fifteen of her poems published between 1978 and 1993 are featured in the Cambridge International GCSE exam syllabus. The acronym GCSE is short for General Certificate of Secondary Education, and it is the main school-leaving certificate in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Apart from being widely read and appreciated by adults, Clarke's poetry plays an important role in formative student education.
Clarke's bibliography is extensive, including the following works: The Sundial (1978), Letter from a Far Country (1982), Selected Poems (1985), Letting in the Rumour (1989), The King of Britain's Daughter (1993), Collected Poems (1997), Five Fields (1998), The Animal Wall: And Other Poems (1999), Nine Green Gardens (2000), Owain Glyn Dwr (2000), Making Beds for the Dead (2004), At the Source (2008), A Recipe for Water (2009), Selected Poems (2016), and Zoology (2017). She currently lives on a smallholding in Ceredigion with her family.
