Christopher Reid



Christopher Reid (born 13 May 1949) is a Hong Kong-born British poet, essayist, cartoonist, and writer. He has been nominated twice for the Whitbread Awards in 1996 and in 1997. A contemporary of Martin Amis, he was educated at Exeter College, Oxford. He is one of the exponents of Martian poetry which employs unusual metaphors to render everyday experiences and objects unfamiliar. He has worked as poetry editor at Faber and Faber and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Hull. In January 2010 he was awarded the 2009 Costa Book Award for A Scattering, written as a tribute to his late wife, the actress Lucinda Gane. The work won in the poetry category, and overall Best Book of the Year, becoming the first poet to take the overall prize since Seamus Heaney in 1999.

Books

 * Arcadia (1979) (1980 Somerset Maugham Award, Hawthornden Prize)
 * Pea Soup (1982)
 * Katerina Brac (1985)
 * In The Echoey Tunnel (1991)
 * Universes (1994)
 * Expanded Universes (1996)
 * Two Dogs on a Pub Roof (1996)
 * Mermaids Explained (2001)
 * For and After (2003)
 * Mr Mouth (2005)
 * A Scattering (2009) (2009 Costa Book Awards - winner, Best Book of the Year)
 * The Song of Lunch (2009)
 * A Box of Tricks for Anna Zyx (2009)

For Children

 * All Sorts (1999)
 * Alphabicycle Order (2001)

As editor
His poem "A Pub Band" is featured in the 2004 anthology Wild Reckoning, which was inspired by Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.
 * The Poetry Book Society Anthology 1989-1990 (1989)
 * Sounds Good: 101 Poems to be Heard (1990)
 * The May Anthology of Oxford and Cambridge Poetry 1997 (1997)
 * Not to Speak of the Dog: 101 Short Stories in Verse (2000)
 * Selected Letters of Ted Hughes (2007)