From the direct trajectory of their first collection, Straight Ahead, Clare Shaw’s second collection Head On turns an unflinching gaze into startling new territories. Structured by interweaving themes of political and personal conflict, the book begins and ends with the recurrent necessity of speaking out. And this is a book which speaks in equal measures, in precise and uncompromising language, about love and tenderness; violence and brutality.
Author Biography:
Clare Shaw was born in Burnley in 1972. Their first two collections with Bloodaxe were Straight Ahead (2006), which attracted a Forward Prize Highly Commended for Best Single Poem, and Head On (2012), which according to the Times Literary Supplement is 'fierce, memorable and visceral'. Their later collections are Flood (2018), a New Writing North Read Regional title in 2019, and Towards a General Theory of Love (2022) which won a Northern Writers' Award and was a Poetry Society Book of the Year.
Their poetry is widely anthologised – including 100 Queer Poems (Penguin Random House, 2022) and the National Trust’s Nature Poems (2023). It is also set to music, illustrated and staged, and has featured multiple times on Radio 4’s Poetry Please and Radio 3’s The Verb. In 2021, Clare wrote the libretto for the community opera Daylighting, which premièred at the Royal Academy of Music and was shortlisted for an Ivor Novello Award for Community and Engagement. They have also written for theatre and radio, and as a mental health educator and trainer, they have published numerous resources in the field of mental health. Clare lives on the hills above Hebden Bridge and in 2022, co-wrote and presented Radio Four’s Weathering the Storm which explored the relationship between art, resilience and the landscape of the Calder Valley.
A passionate advocate for accessibility in poetry, and for poetry as a tool of personal and social change, Clare has founded or directed numerous poetry initiatives including the Kendal Poetry Festival, Wonky Animals, the Lost Things Project and more. They have held poetry residences in numerous settings, including festivals, conferences, hospitals, factories, landfill sites and bogs; and they collaborate with artists and academics in other disciplines, including photography, folk music, film, conservation and design. Clare lectures at the University of Huddersfield and is a regular tutor for Wordsworth Grasmere, The Royal Literary Fund and The Arvon Foundation. Variously described as 'electrifying' and as 'one of the best readers on the scene', Clare performs across the UK and beyond.
