CHRISTOPHER REID

Christopher Reid has written more than a dozen books of poems, the earliest of which identified him as a member of the so-called ‘Martian School’. His published collections have been for both adults and children. He has also edited two anthologies of verse and the Letters of Ted Hughes. Written as a tribute to his late wife, his A Scattering was named Costa Book of the Year 2009, and in 2010 his narrative poem The Song of Lunch became a BBC2 film, starring Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson as former lovers meeting again after fifteen years. The same books supply the text of a theatrical double bill being prepared for performance by the actor Robert Bathurst. His latest book is the tightly structured, hexivocal comic narrative Six Bad Poets (2013).

Reid was poetry editor at Faber and Faber in the 1990s, ran his own imprint, Ondt & Gracehoper, and briefly taught at the University of Hull. His promising career as a cartoonist did not last beyond his time at university.