Who's who

Rupert Loydell was appointed as Lecturer in Creative Writing at University College Falmouth from January 2006. He has previously taught at the Universities of Warwick and Plymouth, and been a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the Universities of Bath and Warwick. He studied painting and writing at degree level and later specialised in creative writing for his MA.

He is particularly interested in process and collaborative writing, and has several books of collaborative poems and poem-sequences in print, as well as volumes of his own solo writing such as his recent volume An Experiment in Navigation (published by Shearsman).

Rupert is the editor of Stride, an online magazine with a worldwide readership, and he also writes book and music reviews for several magazines. Rupert was the Managing Editor of Stride Publications, a small publishing house, for twenty-six years.

He currently oversees the editing and production of UCF's With magazine, and is working on a sequence of poems exploring the work of photographer Joel-Peter Witkin, which continues his research into the links between the visual arts and creative writing.

Recent publications

Wildlife

Rupert Loydell

www.shearsman.com

In these mercurial poems, real and imaginary events combine with overheard, quoted and misquoted voices to produce a slippery and unreliable series of opinionated poems. What appear at first to be heartfelt confessions reveal themselves to be exercises in ventriloquism, argumentative fictions that seek to subvert and surprise the reader. This poetry is a different kind of beast to what you might have expected.

"Wildlife reveals a tangible life lived: through friendships, family, in the company of other poets and artists. A life lived reading and writing poetry, always thinking, rethinking, questioning, and collaging experience into meaning. Sometimes a life of uncertainty and doubt, in which others 'drift through life / without touching the sides in contrast to my friction burns'. But always a life of warm and engaging humour: a man 'unqualified' to dream; another teaching himself Lithuanian 'translating his misunderstanding'; and the many surprising twists of image and language in the rhetorical variations of 'Animals Are Not Your Friends'. It urges its readers: Enjoy Your Wild Life."
Andy Brown

"Through plain and stark language, Loydell creates a poetics of inner chaos which speaks for modern humanity. With his scalpel he reveals the emptiness at the heart of outwardly successful lives, meditates on death's sneaky approach and calls everything we hold dear into question."
Angela Topping

A Music Box of Snakes

Peter Gillies & Rupert Loydell

In A Music Box of Snakes Peter Gillies and Rupert Loydell refuse to pay lip service to the art world. Instead, these two painter-poets question, critique and challenge what they see as they roam around art galleries and museums, cross-examining each artistic reputation they meet. Throwing a revealing light on illusive personalities of the art establishment, Gillies & Loydell fall out with and sometimes make-up with a number of painters, sculptors, photographers, film makers and performance artists whose work they encounter and consider.

These are witty, sardonic and enthused poems which, underneath the exuberant wordplay, explore language and art, along with notions of creativity and self, in a remarkably informed, insightful and tongue-in-cheek way.

The Fantasy Kid

Rupert Loydell

Rupert Loydell's new book of poems for children and the young-at-heart has just been published by Salt.

The Fantasy Kid contains poems which have all been test-driven by the author at schools, festivals, libraries and readings around the country.

Whether pondering questions about the nature of chocolate, serenading slugs, saying goodbye to a starfish, or introducing us to Doctor Fizz and Alvin the Aardvaark, these poems are witty, irreverent, memorable and odd.

From Hepworth's Garden Out

Poems about painters and St. Ives

Rupert Loydell (Ed.)

From Rupert Loydell's first visit to this small Cornish harbour town, he, along with many others, has been fascinated by the combination of sea, light, people and painting that constitute St. Ives.

These themes, along with tourism & trade, myth and the nature of creativity itself, are the subject of this anthology. From Hepworth's Garden Out has at its heart the sculptor Barbara Hepworth's garden and studio, now run by the Tate as a small museum. It is a secluded and magical place, however full of visitors, and it is from this small green oasis and its stone and metal inhabitants that this book starts its winding journey.

Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh

Manifestos and Unmanifestos

Rupert Loydell (Ed.)

Edited by Rupert Loydell, Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh is an eclectic and exciting gathering of poetry and prose-poems that try to understand what poetry is and who or what it might be for. It is also about what writers might want or demand from poetry, in either a general or personal way.