Kate Clanchy was born in Glasgow in 1965 and educated in Edinburgh and Oxford. After working for several years as a teacher in London's East End, she moved to Oxford, where she works as a freelance writer, teacher and journalist.

Her first collection, Slattern (Chatto & Windus, 1995), was published in 1996 and won both the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and the Saltire Prize for Scottish First Book of the Year. Her second collection, Samarkand (Picador, 1999) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize.

Her latest collection, Newborn (Picador, 2004), describes birth, babies and motherhood in rich detail.

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Related links

› Kate Clanchy at www.contemporarywriters.com

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Books I love

An old favourite
Sharon Olds. A key influence on me and almost anyone else writing about childbearing in the last twenty years.

A new favourite
C. K. Williams. Has been installed on my bedside table for the last year. An instructively frank and inclusive poet,, wrapping his long lines round exeriences most of us are too embarassed to name.'

A current interest
A whole crop of new women poets with debut collections- Dorothy Molloy, Kathryn Gray, Sasha Dugdale, Kona McPhee, Leontia Flynn. Good to see, even better to read.

Kate Clanchy, March 2004

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Featured poem

Stance

Now I sit my child on the jut
of my hip, and take
his weight with the curve
of my waist, like a tree
split at the fork,
like lovers leaning out of a waltz.

Nothing is lost. I was never
one of those girls
stood slim as a sapling.
I was often alone at the dance.

Kate Clanchy © 2004
from Newborn (Picador, 2004)