B. 1972

Clare Shaw (they/them) was born in Burnley, England in 1972. Their poetry collections include Towards a General Theory of Love (Bloodaxe, 2022) which won a Northern Writers' Award and was a Poetry Society Book of the Year; Flood (Bloodaxe, 2018), a New Writing North Read Regional title in 2019; Head On (Bloodaxe, 2012); and Straight Ahead (Bloodaxe, 2006), which attracted a Forward Prize Highly Commended for Best Single Poem. Their poetry is anthologized in the National Trust’s Nature Poems (2023) and 100 Queer Poems (VintagePenguin Random House, 2022). Their poetry has also been set to music, illustrated, and staged, and has been featured multiple times on Radio 4’s Poetry Please and Radio 3’s The Verb. 

Shaw wrote the libretto for the community opera Daylighting, which premièred in 2022 at the Royal Academy of Music and was shortlisted for an Ivor Novello Award for Community and Participation. They have also written for theater and radio, and they have published numerous resources in the field of mental health. Shaw lives on the hills above Hebden Bridge, and in 2021, they cowrote and presented Radio Four’s Ways to Weather the Storm, which explored the relationship between art, resilience, and the landscape of the Calder Valley.

An advocate for accessibility in poetry and for poetry as a tool of personal and social change, Shaw has founded or directed numerous poetry initiatives, including the Kendal Poetry Festival, Wonky Animals Poetry Collective, and the Lost Things Project. They have held poetry residencies in many settings, and they collaborate with artists and academics in other disciplines, including photography, folk music, film, conservation, and design. 

Shaw was a lecturer at the University of Huddersfield and works with Wordsworth Grasmere, the Royal Literary Fund, and the Arvon Foundation.