Ken Smith was born in Rudston, East Yorkshire, the son of an itinerant farm labourer. He worked in Britain and America as a teacher, freelance writer, barman, magazine editor, potato picker, BBC reader and creative writing fellow, and was writer-in-residence at Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1985-87. He received America’s highly prestigious Lannan Literary Award for Poetry in 1997, and a Cholmondeley Award in 1998.
Ken Smith was the first poet to be published by Bloodaxe, with his pamphlet Tristan Crazy in 1978. The Poet Reclining: Selected Poems 1962-1980 (Bloodaxe, 1982; reissued 1989) covers the first half of his writing career. Four of his collections, Terra (1986), Wormwood (1987), The heart, the border (1990) and Tender to the Queen of Spain (1993), were Poetry Book Society Recommendations. His last separate collection, Wild Root (1998), a Poetry Book Society Choice, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. All these collections are included in his second Bloodaxe compilation, Shed: Poems 1980-2001 (2002). He edited Klaonica: poems for Bosnia (Bloodaxe Books, 1993) with Judi Benson, and with Matthew Sweeney co-edited Beyond Bedlam (Anvil Press Poetry, 1997), a book of poems by mentally ill people.
He died on 27 June 2003 . His last poems were published in You Again: last poems & other words (Bloodaxe Books, 2004) along with other uncollected work, tributes from other poets, photographs, a biographical portrait and interviews covering the whole range of his life and work. His Collected Poems was published by Bloodaxe in October 2018, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the publication of Tristan Crazy, and with what would have been his 80th birthday.
This biography of Ken Smith is taken from the Bloodaxe Books website.
