Alan Jenkins was born in Surrey in 1955 and has lived for most of his life in London. He studied at the University of Sussex and worked for the Times Literary Supplement from 1981 to 2020, first as poetry and fiction editor, then as deputy editor. He was also a poetry critic for The Observer and the Independent on Sunday from 1985-1990, and has taught creative writing in the USA, London and Paris. His collections of poetry are In The Hot-House (1988), Greenheart (1990), the Forward Prize-winning Harm (1994), The Drift (2000), A Shorter Life (2005), Revenants (2013) and The Ghost Net (2023); Drunken Boats, containing his acclaimed translation of Rimbaud’s ‘Le Bateau ivre’, was published in 2007, and Blue Days (The Sailor’s Return) in 2010. A Short History of Snakes, a selected poems, was published in 2001 by Grove Press, New York. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 1981, a Cholmondeley Award in 2006, and he is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Author photo © Charles Hopkinson.
This biography of Alan Jenkins has been provided by Poetry Archive.
