Roger Elkin is the author of thirteen poetry collections, the latest being The Leading Question (High Window Press, 2021), shortlisted for the Wales Poetry Book Award and the 2022 Arnold Bennett Award. The collection deals with the events of the Irish Potato Famine 1845-52. For a signed/dedicated copy, e-mail Roger Elkin direct.
 
He was shortlisted for the Bloodaxe New Blood Book-length Competition (1987); one of 10 shortlisted (out of 4,000 entries) for the Strokestown International Poetry Competition (2003); and one of 6 shortlisted for the Keele University Poetry Prize(2007), and has won 45 firsts prizes in (inter)national poetry competitions.
 
His poetry has received the Lake Aske Memorial Award (1982 & 1987); the Douglas Gibson Memorial Award (1986); the Sylvia Plath Award for Poems about Women (1986); and the Hugh MacDiarmid Trophy (2003). He became the first recipient of the Howard Sergeant Memorial Award for Services to Poetry in 1987; and was The Writer’s Rostrum “Poet of the Year, 1991”.
 
He has shared poetry readings with among others:
Elizabeth Bartlett, Martin Booth, Gladys Mary Coles, Helen Dunmore, Ruth Fainlight, U A Fanthorpe, Sylvia Kantaris, John Latham, Bernard O’Donoghue, Mario Petrucci, Lawrence Sail, Carole Satyamurti, Howard Sergeant and Pauline Stainer.
 
He has reviewed for Stand, Outposts, Envoi; and his critical articles on Ted Hughes’s Recklings poems have appeared in collections of essays edited by Keith Sagar, The Challenge of Ted Hughes, (St Martin’s Press, [1995] ISBN 0-312-12054-0) and Joanny Moulin, Lire Ted Hughes, (Edition du Temps, [1999], ISBN 2-84274-074-2) and on The Ted Hughes Society and Earth-moon Ted Hughes websites.
 
He was poetry tutor of residential weekend courses at Wedgwood College, Barlaston.
 
He was literary advisor to the Leek Arts Festival, for whom he organized an International Poetry Competition (1982-1992); the co-Editor (1985-1988) of Prospice, the international literary quarterly, issues 17-25 inclusive; and sole Editor of Envoi 1991-2006, (issues 101-145) during which time prize-winning writers Julia Copus, Tobias Hill and Owen Sheers had their poetic openings in the magazine’s First Publication Feature.
 
Review comments:
 

Roger Elkin’s poems burst with sharply observed and well-chosen detail, and are simply very interesting.

 

Don Paterson

 
 

on Bird In The Hand (2012):
 

Empathy, nostalgia, joy, pathos, exuberance and energy drive the writing … The choice of vocabulary is so perfect you couldn’t bear to lose a single word. As well as using language with precision, he paints – through stunning imagery – pictures more vivid than the bird life he chronicles. His voice is powerful, poetic and arresting.

 

Alison Chisholm

 
 

on Marking Time (2012):
 

A work of considerable maturity and vision, its success measured by the powerful ways in which stories are told, and histories recreated … rooted in characterization, the intricate and crafted phrasing, which leaves the reader moved … This is unusual in poetry, and difficult to achieve. It leaves you wanting to read, meet and learn more of the same. This is a big and important book.

 

Will Daunt

 
 

on Fixing Things (2010):
 

You have that rare thing – your own subject matter. For you, poetry is a painful business, it seems to me.

 

Craig Raine

 
 

on Blood Brothers, New and Selected Poems (2006):
 

A very impressive collection with a large number of well-crafted poems … Elkin can build up a poem with a huge resource of skill, employing a seemingly endless catalogue of observation and anecdote. He has a real sense of structure, almost like a novelist’s. Each detail, idiosyncrasy and conversation is placed to maximum effect … revealing a potent vision of those he encounters … These are compelling poems … Such an authentic, figurative picture verges on social history but retains the drama, the pathos of personal disintegration … Moving and powerful writing.

 

Other Poetry, summer 2007

 
 

The full publications list with more details and review comments appears here