Rachael Boast

Rachael Boast was born in Suffolk in 1975. Her first collection, Sidereal, was published by Picador Poetry in 2011 and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry Prize. Her second collection, Pilgrim’s Flower (Picador Poetry, 2013) was shortlisted for the Griffin Prize. Void Studies, realising a project that Arthur Rimbaud proposed but never got round to writing, was published in 2016 (Picador Poetry). Her work has appeared in several magazines, including Archipelago, Markings and The Yellow Nib. She is the editor of The Echoing Gallery: Bristol Poets and Art in the City (Redcliffe Press). Since Void Studies was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2016, Rachael has published Hotel Raphael (2021). Her anthology Versus Versus: 100 Poems by Deaf, Disabled & Neurodivergent Poets (Bloodaxe Books, 2025) is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Summer 2025. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.