Ahren Warner

Ahren Warner was born in 1986 and grew up in Lincolnshire before moving to London. He completed his doctoral thesis on philosophy, psychoanalysis and the commodity in twentieth-century poetry at the University of London. His first two collections were Confer (Bloodaxe Books, 2011) and Pretty (Bloodaxe Books, 2013); Confer was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2013. He also published a pocketbook, Re:, with Donut Press. Since judging the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2015, Ahren has published two further collections with Bloodaxe: Your promise has been extracted (2017), shortlisted for the Roehampton Poetry Prize 2018, and I’m totally killing your vibes (2022). His collections have received three Poetry Book Society Recommendations and awards including an Arts Foundation Fellowship. He works across writing, photography and moving image, with an intermedia project, The sea is spread and cleaved and furled, published by Prototype in 2020, and a film – I’m thinking what would sound sincere but also, like, oh, that’s super cute, selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries (2020). He is a former Poetry Editor of Poetry London. Author photo © Rebecca Ribichini