John Birtwhistle was born in Scunthorpe in 1946. He received an Eric Gregory Award in 1975 and ten years later his third book was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Nearly all his work has been supported by public money, whether through education as a Lecturer in English at the University of York, or through Arts Council funding of books, fellowships and opera, or through the NHS income of his wife Mireille. Since 1992, he has lived in Sheffield with his family. He is working on a new collection of poems, and on a book about poets confronting death.
'Partial Shade' is the common gardening term for plants that in fact need a measure of sunshine. In John Birtwhistle's poems, there is a continual play of light and shadow – and even glimpses of 'full sun'.
This selection from his own work does not follow chronology. It is an entirely...
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