Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Kiran Millwood Hargrave was born in London in 1990. Her poetry publications include a pamphlet,  Scavengers (British Shakespeare Association, 2011), and three full collections including Last March which was produced in collaboration with the Scott Polar Research Institute to mark the centenary of Captain Scott's final expedition to the South Pole. Further collections include wide-shining (52 rat press, 2013), which won the NOTHING TO SAY award; and Splitfish (Gatehouse Press, 2013). In 2016, her poetic retelling of Orpheus and Eurydice will be published by Bloomsbury as part of a graphic novel by Tom de Freston.

Kiran won the Yeovil Literary Prize for Poetry 2013, was President of the Oxford University Poetry Society, and a Barbican Young Poet. Her work has appeared in international magazines and journals such as Room, Agenda, Magma, Shearsman, and La Galla Ciencia, and anthologised in publications such as Raving Beauties (Bloodaxe Books, 2015), Furies (For Books’ Sake, 2015), and Catechism (English PEN, 2014). Her debut play BOAT premiered in 2015 to five star reviews, with critics calling the script 'writing at its most imaginative, intelligent, and brutal’. Her debut novel The Girl of Ink and Stars was published by Chicken House/Scholastic (UK) and Knopf/Random House (US) in 2016.

Praise for Kiran’s poetry:

"powerful, disquieting and contemporary" John Mole

"Kiran's language is immediate and totally contemporary, more Beckett than Shakespeare in its tense spare economy, but revealing a wit and clarity." Sir Trevor Nunn 

"It’s a poetry you feel and taste, embodied and emboldened by painterly detail, the precise, tactile verb. Hargrave weaves together the Imagist and the Romantic impulse with her own 21st century vision. It’s an assured, beautiful collection and a voice you’ll want to spend a lot of time with.” Luke Kennard

"Urgent, unnerving, always elegant, Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s poems hold the world.” Helen Mort