Fiona Sampson



Fiona Sampson (born 1968) is an award-winning British poet.

Life
Born in London, Sampson grew up in the West Country, on the west coast of Wales and in Gloucestershire. She was educated at the Royal Academy of Music, and following a brief career as a concert violinist, studied at Oxford University, where she won the Newdigate Prize. She gained a PhD in the philosophy of language from Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands and currently lives in London.

Work
Sampson has published fifteen books, including works of poetry, volumes on the philosophy of language and on the writing process. Her poetry has been published and broadcast in more than thirty languages and her many translations include the work of Jaan Kaplinski. She contributes to The Guardian, The Irish Times The Independent, the Times Literary Supplement, the "Sunday Times", and is the editor of Poetry Review, the oldest and most widely-read poetry journal in the UK. She is the first woman editor of the journal since Muriel Spark (1947-9). She advises internationally on creative writing in healthcare. She was the founder-director of Poetryfest - the Aberystwyth International Poetry Festival and the founding editor of Orient Express, a journal of contemporary writing from Europe. Sampson's work is held online, in text and audio, at The Poetry Archive.

Her fifth full poetry collection was Rough Music (Carcanet, 2010), following A Century of Poetry Review (Carcanet, 2009), a PBS Special Commendation and Poetry Writing: The expert guide (Robert Hale, 2009). Her volume of Newcastle/Bloodaxe Poetry Lectures, Music Lessons was published in June 2011 and her volume Percy Bysshe Shelley in the Faber and Faber Poet to Poet series, in September 2011 (it was the PBS on-line Book Club Choice).

Awards and Honours
The poem "Trumpeldor Beach" was shortlisted for the 2006 Forward prize and her volume Common Prayer was shortlisted for the 2007 T. S. Eliot Prize. She has won the Cholmondeley Award (2009), the 2003 Zlaten Prsten for international writing (Macedonian Foundation for Culture and Sciences), a Hawthornden Fellowship, the Newdigate Prize; and awards from the Arts Councils of England and Wales and the Society of Authors. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. and was elected to the Council in 2011. Rough Music was shortlisted for both the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Forward Prize 2010 for best collection.

Selected bibliography

 * The Self on the Page: Theory and Practice of Creative Writing in Personal Development (with Celia Hunt) Jessica Kingsley (1998)
 * The Healing Word (1998)
 * Creative Writing In Health And Social Care (editor)  Jessica Kingsley, (2004)
 * A Fine Line: New Poetry from East and Central Europe (with Jean Boase-Beier and Alexandra Buchler, Arc, 2004)
 * Evening Brings Everything Back (translations of Jaan Kaplinski, Bloodaxe, 2004)
 * Folding the Real (Seren, 2001, published in Romanian by Editura Paralela 45, 2004)
 * Writing: Self and Reflexivity co-authored with Celia Hunt (2005)
 * The Distance Between Us (Seren, 2006)
 * On Listening (Salt, 2007)
 * Day co-authored with Amir Or (2007)
 * Common Prayer (2007), short-listed for the 2007 T. S. Eliot Prize
 * A Century of Poetry Review (Carcanet, 2009)
 * Poetry Writing: the Expert Guide (Robert Hale, 2009)
 * Rough Music (Carcanet Press, 2010)