Michael Symmons Roberts, born in Preston, England in 1963, is one of Britain's foremost contemporary poets. Alongside teaching - Symmons is the Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, Symmons has won an array of literary prizes over the course of his career, including the Forward and Whitbread prizes and the Costa Book Award.
Stylistically experimental, Symmons Roberts's poetry has dealt with themes as varied as the Cold War, love and the history and culture of Manchester. A poet whose one preoccupations with religion pepper his poems, Symmons Roberts arrived at Oxford University to read Philosophy and Theology a committed atheist, but left doubting his previously dogmatic views. He converted to Roman Catholicism in adulthood, but his poems deal with the tension between religion and science in our increasingly secular age, making them thought-provoking and important reads for all.
