Alice Priscilla Lyle Oswald (née Keen; born 31 August 1966) is a British poet from Reading, Berkshire. Her work won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2002 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2017. [1] [2] In September 2017, she was named as BBC Radio 4's second Poet-in-Residence, succeeding Daljit Nagra. [3] On 1 October 2019, she took up the post of Oxford Professor of Poetry. [4] Biography [ edit ] a b "2013 Popescu Prize". The Poetry Society. Archived from the original on 1 August 2015 . Retrieved 18 August 2021. Terrain: Difficult going, no defined path from Dartmeet to the New Bridge, but a very rewarding route nonetheless. Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth

The river becomes tidal at Totnes (‘the river meets the Sea at the foot of Totnes Weir’) and its character changes – rolling downs, much longer vistas, a sense that the sea cannot be far away. I usually struggle to read long pieces of poetry, and so I was surprised to find that I enjoyed this so much. Again, this came from my boyfriend – he had to read it for a module of his, and started reading it aloud while I was there. I think this approach was what kept me interested; I didn’t read it all aloud, but if I found myself getting tired it helped to imagine it being read out in my head, rather than just reading it. Focusing on the rhythms and beat of the piece not only helped me read it but I think it also adds to the feel of it – there are places with little rhythm and places with a clear beat; this is obviously intentional, and should be read as such. The right angle of the river we see on our way downstream just after the island is yet further evidence as to how much the direction and nature of the flow were reconfigured by the tinners in pursuit of their precious metal. She would certainly have been familiar with his intimacy with The Dart when she came to write her poem. She also compiled ‘A Ted Hughes Bestiary’ (2016), a compilation of his writing about animals real and invented. The East Dart Valley is one of the most inaccessible parts of Dartmoor and in many ways is the inner heart of the moor. The source, East Dart Head consists of a large bowl that drains a substantial part of high Dartmoor. There are three tributaries that join up and merge at the southern edge of the bowl to form the river.

She has succeeded in finding a freshness of her own - and a playfulness. Take the serious tease of the title's 'etc'. She says: 'I love etc and dot dot dot. I feel the universe is constructed with an etc. I am really happy starting a sentence, it is finding an end that is difficult.' She is a sparing user of full stops. She has spent this year, as an experiment, writing prose, although it is 'not really prose'. She finds prose is sometimes 'better at detail'. In poetry, she is 'so seduced by sound'. As a result of this cutting off and changing of rhythms, Oswald’s pacing is interesting and well done. Again, this reflects the river; some parts as slower, as the river may slow down, others fast paced, like rapids. The way she uses language and formats the poem also adds to this in an unexpected way – this isn’t set out in one way. Like the changes in voice and rhythm, the formatting of the poem changes regularly and in different ways; sometimes it changes suddenly, others it transitions smoothly. After lunch here, we then continue on the east bank to Kingsbridge. As we reach the estuary, the ferryman speaks: Dart is a long-form poem about a river. The genesis of the poem was interviews that Oswald conducted with people who live and work along the Dart River in England. She wove their first-person voices into distinct characters whose edges blur throughout the section-less poem. She varies the form organically, according to which voice and character are speaking. For instance, at one point she alternates between a forester, who speaks in paragraphs, and a water nymph, who speaks in quatrains. Poetry that wrangles an element. Setting up "language" in relief to "water," the experience takes on the river's primal forces: flowing, nimble, refreshing, dangerous.

It is in very truth a sunny, misty, cloudy, dazzling, howling, omniform Day...’ – Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Sotheby, 27 September 1802 In 2016 her collection FALLING AWAKE (Cape Poetry) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection 2016 and the T.S. Eliot Prize 2016, and was the winner of the Costa Poetry Award 2016. In June 2017 she was awarded the International Griffin Poetry Prize 2017. I think about those years of gardening every single day. It was the foundation of a different way of perceiving things. Instead of looking at landscape in a baffled, longing way, it was a release when I worked outside to feel that I was using it, part of it. I became critical of any account that was not a working account.' She says that the balance is 'precarious', that she writes with earplugs in, that everything is 'framed by chaos'. All poetry has a memorial aspect – the fixing of a moment, a place, the passing of a life. But this is remembering on a grand scale. This is a concentrated, intense, multi-tasking elegy. And it is written with a freshness to match Homer's own – as if each soldier had died on the day of writing' Observer

Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 2, Burke's Peerage, Ltd, 2003, p. 1987

shortlisted for Forward Poetry Prize (Best First Collection), The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile [10] Secondly, Oswald explores the challenges of writing about a landscape that has been linguistically domesticated over many centuries. "I'm continually smashing down the nostalgia in my head," she says, "and I am trying to enquire of the landscape itself what it feels about itself rather than bringing in advertising skills. There's a whole range of words that people use about landscape. Pastoral? Idyll? I can't stand them." This next phase of the walk is truly remarkable and, although the path is sometimes hard to find and full of boulders and tree roots, providing you are careful with your footing everything will be fine as all you need to do is keep the river on your right. I carried a walking pole, which helped enormously.We soon arrive at Northgate House alongside the abbey, offering impeccable, good-value accommodation and a hearty breakfast. it is part of the Foundation. A couple of kilometres south of here three tributaries join up to create a much more definable flow, and the day we walk here the exact spot is marked by a Dartmoor pony placidly grazing and its foal (cf. foal of a river). In all the time it takes us to reach where they are standing they don’t move an inch.

This is a book-length poem – a collage of water-stories, taken mostly from the Odyssey – about a minor character, abandoned on a stony island. It is not a translation, though, but a close inspection of the sea that surrounds him. There are several voices in the poem but no proper names, although its presiding spirit is Proteus, the shape-shifting sea-god. We recognise other mythical characters – Helios, Icarus, Alcyone, Philoctetes, Calypso, Clytemnestra, Orpheus, Poseidon, Hermes – who drift in and out of the poem, surfacing briefly before disappearing. Oswald’s own words on the piece explain what she is trying to achieve incredibly well, and I would definitely suggest keeping them in mind if you decide to read this;

We have holidayed in Salcombe in South Devon pretty much every year for the last twenty. And bit by bit, as the boys have got older and stronger (and before I get older and weaker), we have walked further and further afield; once all the way to Plymouth (hugely lengthened by all the estuaries) and once up the Dart Estuary from Dartmouth to Totnes. Falling Awake provides the notation for an immersive aural experience... it is certainly a strong contender in this year's Forward Prizes, and a highly compelling meditation upon transience' Huffington Post