Ruth Fainlight was born in New York City in 1931. She was educated
in the United States and England, and has lived in England since
the age of 15, mostly in London. She lived in Spain for four years
in her 20s, and has spent long periods in France and Morocco. Her
first poetry collection, Cages, was published in 1966. She was Poet
in Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, in
1985 and 1990. She was Writing Tutor (for libretti) at the
Performing Arts Labs, International Opera and Music Theatre Labs in
the UK in 1997-99. Her New & Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 2010)
covers work written over 50 years, drawing on over a dozen books as
well as a whole new collection and a selection of her translations
of Sophia Mello de Breyner and Victor Manuel Mendiola. Four of
those collections were originally published by Bloodaxe, including
Sugar-Paper Blue (1997), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread
Poetry Award. Other collections were published by Macmillan,
Hutchinson and Sinclair-Stevenson. Her latest collection is
Somewhere Else Entirely (Bloodaxe Books, 2018). She has received
the Hawthorden Award and the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry, and is
a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Ruth Fainlight's collections of short stories include Daylife and
Nightlife (André Deutsch, 1971) and Dr Clock's Last Case and Other
Stories (Virago, 1994). As a poet, short-story writer and
translator, she has contributed to many anthologies. Her own work
has been translated into Portuguese, French, Spanish, Italian and
Romanian, and she has herself published translations from the
Portuguese of the poetry of Sophia de Mello Breyner, and from the
Spanish of several Latin American poets represented in her New &
Collected Poems. She has also written four libretti: The Dancer
Hotoke (1991), a chamber opera with music by Erika Fox, performed
as part of the Royal Opera's 'Garden Venture' in 1991 and
shortlisted for the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding
Achievement in Opera; The European Story (based on her poem of the
same title, 1993), also commissioned by the Royal Opera House; and
Bedlam Britannica, which was commissioned by Channel 4 Television
for the series War Cries in 1995; and The Bride in Her Grave. Her
translation (with Robert J. Littman) of The Theban Plays by
Sophocles (Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus and Antigone) was
published in 2009 in the Johns Hopkins University Press's New
Translations from Antiquity series. She lives in London, and was
married to the late Alan Sillitoe for over 50 years. She
collaborated with him on an adaptation of Lope de Vega's play
Fuenteovejuna, commissioned by the National Theatre and published
as All Citizens Are Soldiers.
Her New & Collected Poems, representing half a century's work, asks us to read her writing life as a journey that never really ends, even with publication of a monumental achievement...an extraordinary maturity of voice and vision. The essential continuity of her work is immediately striking; the poems affirm her own sense of poetry (and life) as a constant happening, the past a perpetual present.' – Fran Brearton, Guardian
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