List Of Writers

FRANCIS, MATTHEW

The Green, Bridge Street, Llanon, Ceredigion SY23 5HA
Tel: (01970) 202149
Website: http://www.7greenhill.freeserve.co.uk
Email: matthew@7greenhill.freeserve.co.uk

Poet, novelist, short–story writer, critic and lecturer. Born Gosport, Hants. Educated Magdalene College, Cambridge and Southampton University (PhD in English, 1997). Winner of TLS/Blackwell’s Prize for his poem The Ornamental Hermit. Winner of Southern Arts Prize and shortlisted for Best First Collection Forward Prize for both his first, Blizzard  (Faber, 1996), and second, Dragons (Faber, 2001) poetry collections. In 2004 he was named as one of the Next Generation Poets. He is Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and lives in West Wales with his wife, Creina.

Selected Publications:
WHOM (Bloomsbury Press, 1989)
Blizzard (Faber, 1996)
Dragons (Faber, 2001)
Whereabouts (Rufus Books, 2005)
Mandeville (Faber and Faber, 2008)

Contributed to:
First Fictions: Introduction 10 (contributor) (Faber, 2000)
New Collected Poems: W.S. Graham (editor) (Faber, 2004) 




Mandeville (Faber and Faber, 2008)

The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was one of the most popular books of the later Middle Ages. Purporting to describe the circumnavigation of an English knight through Africa, India, and the Middle East in 1322, the narrative is a fantastical collection of sights: seas, islands, phoenixes, pyramids, rocks that enchant ships and apes that contain human souls, interwoven with geographical descriptions that are perfectly accurate. Matthew Francis’ new collection is a sequence of poems that celebrate and give voice to Mandeville, in his own words, caught as he is between physical and symbolic geographies, between a world that is round and one that has Jerusalem at its centre. And all of it narrated in the terse, solitary, conflicted and strangely passionate voice of this medieval Crusoe whose very existence was disputed.

To purchase this title from amazon.co.uk, please click on its front cover

 



Eligible Writers on Tour subjects:
1. Read and discuss own work
2. Poetry / fiction workshops for children or adults
3. Modern and contemporary poetry in English
4. Modern and contemporary fiction
5. Poetic form
6. The poetry of W. S. Graham

AGE-RANGE: 10 to adult