Arthur Allen (b. 1994) is the author of Twenty Twenty: Treatments for Cut Flowers (runner-up, Erbacce Prize for Poetry 2021) and The Nurseryman (winner, Eyelands Book Awards 2019 Poetry Prize), as well as the chapbook Here Birds Are (semi-finalist in the Claudia Emerson Poetry Chapbook Award 2016).
Arthur’s poem ‘Some things I do not know’ was chosen as a finalist in the Snowbound Chapbook Award 2023, and shortlisted in Wigtown’s Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize 2023, and the 2023 Live Canon Poetry Competition. In 2022, Arthur was included on the prestigious long-list for The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition, selected out of 17,800 entries. He was long-listed by Glyn Maxwell for the AUB International Poetry Prize 2022, and his poem ‘Unhomely Places’ appears in Responses to Pale Blue Dot by Voyager 1, the 2022 anthology in a series from Pilot Press responding to works of art made during the AIDS crisis. Arthur was specially commended by Owen Sheers in the Wells Festival of Literature 2021 Open Poetry Competition, chosen by the Black Mountain Press as one of The 64, Best Poets of 2019 and won third prize in the Ambit Annual Poetry Competition 2018.
He is the only English translator of Maria Wine, forgotten Swedish author of poetry books that were her ‘spiritual diaries’.
Arthur is currently reading for a PhD in grief and semiotics at the University of Edinburgh, funded by a College Research Award from their School of Literature, Languages and Culture.
Education
University of Edinburgh, PhD Creative Writing, 2019 -
University of Oxford, MSt Creative Writing, 2015-17 (Distinction)
University of East Anglia, B.A. (Hons) English Literature, 2011-14
Twenty Twenty:
Treatments for Cut Flowers
‘ I do not mean to tell this story
as if it is the only one. ’
Available now from Erbacce Press.