Literary Birthday – 8 June – Gillian Clarke

Happy Birthday, Gillian Clarke, born on 8 June 1937.

Gillian Clarke Quotes

1. There’s a side to all writers that loves nothing better than a book, a big chair, a window.
2. Poetry is a hook for memory.
3. Why does a good poem catch the heart? Because the observation rings true, the words are right, and the syntax carries home subject, idea, image and narrative in a perfect cadenza.
4. There is no such thing as a silent poem.
5. Language is not frozen. It’s alive and it changes and grows with every generation of readers and writers and speakers. A poem is not carved in stone. It speaks. We listen. We respond.

Gillian Clarke is a Welsh poet, playwright, editor, broadcaster, lecturer, and translator. She was the National Poet of Wales from 2008-2016. Her collection, Ice, was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Award 2012. Her latest work is Zoology. Her prose works include a writer’s journal, At the Source. Clarke was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2000. She was awarded the Queen’s Gold medal for Poetry in 2010 and the Wilfred Owen Award in 2012.

Photograph: Author’s Website via Author: Photographer Marion Delyth