Clare Shaw reads for Poets & Players at the IABF on 22 October 2022
Channel: Poets & Players
Date: 03/11/2022

Clare Shaw (they/them) has four poetry collections with Bloodaxe. Their latest collection Towards a General Theory of Love was awarded a Northern Writer’s Award, and was published in May 2022. Clare is Co-Director of the Kendal Poetry Festival and a regular tutor for Wordsworth Grasmere and the Arvon Foundation.

Clare has written and presented poetry, drama and documentaries on Radio 3 and Radio 4, and they work in collaboration with artists across genres. In 2019, they were a judge for the final Ted Hughes Award which celebrated new poetic work beyond the conventional realms of poetry, and in 2022, they wrote the libretto for the opera “Daylighting” which premiered at the Royal Academy for Music.

With a background in mental health and education, Clare is a keen advocate for writing as a tool of social and personal change, and as Project Lead for the Royal Literary Fund, they were responsible for setting up writing projects in workplaces across the UK. Clare was the resident poet for Lancashire Wildlife Trust in 2021 and they continue to use poetry to engage communities with wildlife and ecology. In collaboration with the novelist Winnie M Li, Clare was the recipient of a Royal Society of Literature Literature Matters Award in 2019, creating workshops and a free online resource for survivors of trauma: available via this link:  http://clearlines.org.uk/our-free-creative-writing-guide-for-survivors-available-here/