Michael Schmidt (poet)

Michael Schmidt OBE^[1] FRSL^[2] (born 2 March 1947)^[3] is a Mexican-British poet, author, scholar and publisher.

Biography

Born in Mexico City, Mexico, Schmidt studied at Harvard and at Wadham College, Oxford University. He was Professor of Poetry at Glasgow University until 2014, and from 2012 to 2015 he was Writer in Residence at St. John's College, Cambridge. He is founder (1969) and editorial and managing director of Carcanet Press and a founder (1973) and general editor of PN Review. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he received an OBE in 2006 for services to poetry.^[4] His literary career has been described as having "a strong sense of internationalism and cultural ‘connectedness’".^[5] Schmidt refers to himself in his book Lives of the Poets as "an Anglophone Mexican publisher".^[5]

Schmidt's 2014 book The Novel: A Biography is a loosely chronological history of the development of the novel.^[6] The book aims to explore the relationships between great novelists, including views by other novelists while avoiding literary critics who were not also writers.^[7]

Selected bibliography

Poetry

• It Was My Tree (Anvil, 1970)
• Bedlam and the Oak Wood (Carcanet, 1970)
• Desert of the Lions (Carcanet, 1972)
• My Brother Gloucester (Carcanet, 1976)
• A Change of Affairs (Anvil, 1978)
• The Love of Strangers - Poetry Book Society Special Commendation (Century Hutchinson, 1989)
• Selected Poems, 1972-1997 - Poetry Book Society Special Commendation (Smith/Doorstop, 1997)
• The Resurrection of the Body (USA: Sheep Meadow; Smith/Doorstop, 2007)
• Collected Poems (Smith/Doorstop 2009, Sheep Meadow Press 2010)
• The Stories of My Life (Smith/Doorstop 2013)

Fiction

• The Colonist - Los Angeles Times book award (Muller/Hutchinson, 1983; published in USA as Green Island, Vanguard 1984, Dell, 1985)
• The Dresden Gate (Century Hutchinson, 1988; Vanguard, 1989)

Criticism

• Reading Modern Poetry (Routledge, London, 1989) ISBN 0-415-01568-5
• Lives of the Poets (Phoenix, 1998) ISBN 978-0-7538-0745-3
• The Story of Poetry: From Cædmon to Caxton; From Skelton to Dryden; From Pope to Burns (three volumes) (2001–2006)
• The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets (2004)
• The Novel: A Biography (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2014)

Anthologies

• New Poetries I-VI (Carcanet, 1994-2014)
• The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century Poetry in English (1999, 2005) (editor)
• A Calendar of Modern Poetry (PN Review 100, 1994)
• The Great Modern Poets(inc audio excerpts) Quercus Poetry 2006 ISBN 9780857382467

References

1. "Poetry Professor offers Independent thinking". University of Glasgow. 2008-03-08. Retrieved 2015-11-13.
2. "Current RSL Fellows". rsliterature.org. Retrieved 2015-11-13.
3. Life/Letters, Michael Schmidt website.
4. Michael Schmidt, The Resurrection of the Body, Smith/Doorstop Books, 2007.
5. Contemporary Writers
6. Deresiewicz, William (June 2014). "How the Novel Made the Modern World". The Atlantic. Retrieved 5 March 2016.
7. Eaglestone, Robert (31 July 2014). "The Novel: A Biography, by Michael Schmidt". Times Higher Education. Retrieved 5 March 2016.

External links

• Michael Schmidt's website
• Biography on Carcanet Press
• Profile on Contemporary Writers
• "What, How Well, Why?"—Schmidt's Lecture from StAnza, Scotland's annual poetry festival
• Podcast Interview with Schmidt by André Naffis-Sahely