Lavinia Greenlaw

File:Meeting with writers from the UK 2019 (cropped).jpg

Lavinia Greenlaw was born in London into a medical and scientific family,{{Cite web |url=https://www.loc.gov/today/pr/1997/97-213.html |title=Poet Lavinia Greenlaw To Read at Library of Congress December 23, 1997 |access-date=14 June 2007 |date=23 December 1997 |publisher=The Library of Congress}} and has a sister and two brothers.{{cite news|author=Marianne Brace|url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/lavinia-greenlaw-testament-of-middle-youth-521740.html |title=Lavinia Greenlaw: Testament of middle youth|newspaper=The Independent|date= 6 January 2006}} When she was aged 11, the family moved from London to an Essex village, where they lived for seven years.Adam Newey, [http://www.newstatesman.com/node/146489 "Poetry – Essex Girl"], New Statesman, 13 October 2003. This period Greenlaw has described as "an interim time", with "memories of time being arrested, nothing much happening."

Greenlaw went on to read modern arts at Kingston Polytechnic. She then studied at the London College of Printing and gained an MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute. She was employed as an editor at Imperial College of Science and Technology (1985–1986) and subsequently worked with the publishers Allison & Busby (1986–1987),[http://www.interlitq.org/staff/lavinia_greenlaw/bio.php Bio | Lavinia Greenlaw] at The International Literary Quarterly.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/aug/03/clive-allison-obituary|newspaper=The Guardian|title=Clive Allison obituary|author=Margaret Busby|date=3 August 2011}}Mohit K. Ray (ed.), The Atlantic Companion to Literature in English, New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2007, pp. 221–222. and then with Earthscan (1988–1990), again alongside Margaret Busby.Miles Litvinoff, "Acknowledgements", The Earthscan Action Handbook for People and Planet, Earthscan, 1990.Philip Hobsbaum, [http://www.encyclopedia.com/article-1G2-3438006905/greenlaw-lavinia-elaine.html "Greenlaw, Lavinia (Elaine)"], Encyclopedia.com. Greenlaw also worked as an arts administrator for Southbank Centre (1990–1991) and the London Arts Board (1991–1994).

Greenlaw's career as a freelance artist, critic and broadcaster began in 1994. She became the first artist-in-residence at the Science Museum (1994–1995),[https://literature.britishcouncil.org/writer/lavinia-greenlaw "Lavinia Greenlaw"], British Council, Literature. and has since held residences at the Royal Festival Hall, at a London solicitors' firm (1997–1998), and at the Royal Society of Medicine (2004).[https://www.haus-fuer-poesie.org/en/poesiefestival-berlin/kuenstler-2017/map/ "Off the Map |Lavinia Greenlaw"], Haus für Poesie. In 2013, she won an Engagement Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust.[https://wellcome.org/press-release/wellcome-trust-awards-three-new-engagement-fellowships "Wellcome Trust awards three new Engagement Fellowships"] (press release), Wellcome Trust, 3 September 2013. Retrieved 7 June 2024. Her sound work Audio Obscura was commissioned in 2011 by Artangel and Manchester International Festival,[http://www.laviniagreenlaw.org/biography/ "Biography"], Lavinia Greenlaw website. and heard at Manchester Piccadilly station in July 2011 and London St Pancras station in September and October 2011. It won the 2011 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry, the judges calling it "groundbreaking".{{cite news|author=Alison Flood|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/30/lavinia-greenlaw-wins-ted-hughes-award |title=Lavinia Greenlaw wins Ted Hughes award 2011 for new work in poetry|newspaper=The Guardian|date=30 March 2012}}Kaite O'Reilly: [https://kaiteoreilly.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/ted-hughes-award-for-new-work-in-poetry-2011-lavinia-greenlaw/ "Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry 2011: Lavinia Greenlaw"], 31 March 2012.

Greenlaw taught at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She served as professor of creative writing at the University of East Anglia from 2007 to 2013, and as a visiting professor at King's College London (2015–2016) and Freie Universität Berlin (2017). She currently holds the post of Professor of Creative Writing (Poetry) at Royal Holloway, University of London.

After judging the 2010 Manchester Poetry Prize, Greenlaw chaired in 2014 the judging panel for the inaugural Folio Prize.{{cite news|author=Mark Brown|url=https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2013/jul/16/lavinia-greenlaw-chairs-folio-prize?INTCMP=SRCH|title=Lavinia Greenlaw to chair judging panel for Folio prize|newspaper=The Guardian|date=16 July 2013}}{{cite news|author=Mark Brown|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/10/folio-prize-shortlist-eight-book-shortlist-man-booker |title=Folio Prize announces inaugural shortlist of eight books|newspaper=The Guardian|date=10 February 2014}} She is a Council member of the Royal Society of Literature and a former Chair of The Poetry Society.

In October 2023, Greenlaw was announced as Poetry Editor of Faber and Faber, in succession to Matthew Hollis.{{cite web|url=https://www.faber.co.uk/journal/lavinia-greenlaw-appointed-poetry-editor-at-faber/|title=Lavinia Greenlaw Appointed Poetry Editor at Faber|date=13 October 2023|publisher=Faber}}

Primarily a poet, Greenlaw was the author of two pamphlets, The Cost of Getting Lost in Space (1991) and Love from a Foreign City (1992), before her first full-length collection, Night Photograph, was published in 1993 by Faber. Her work was included in the 1997 Bloodaxe Books anthology Making for Planet Alice: New Women Poets, edited by Maura Dooley, and the same year Greenlaw's second collection, A World Where News Travelled Slowly, was published.{{cite web|url=http://poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record9f20.html?id=1038|title=Interview with Lavinia Greenlaw|first=Tim|last=Kendall|website=Poetry Magazines|number=8|date=Summer 1997|access-date=13 October 2023}}

She went on to write novels, short stories, plays and non-fiction. She has also made radio documentaries. Her work for music includes the libretto for the opera Peter Pan composed by Richard Ayres (Staatsoper Stuttgart/Komische Oper Berlin/Welsh National Opera and Royal Opera House, 2015).[http://www.roh.org.uk/people/lavinia-greenlaw "Lavinia Greenlaw"], Royal Opera House.[https://wno.org.uk/archive/2014-2015/peter-pan-richard-ayres "Peter Pan Richard Ayres"], WNO. Archived 2014/2015. Publications for which she has written include the London Review of Books, The Guardian and The New Yorker, and in 2019 she was a contributor to A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue Between East and West (Gingko Library).{{Cite web |url=https://newdivan.org.uk/poet/lavinia-greenlaw/ |title=A New Divan|publisher=Gingko |access-date=14 January 2022}}{{Cite web |url=https://www.eurolitnetwork.com/riveting-reviews-ru%CC%88diger-gorner-reviews-a-new-divan-a-lyrical-dialogue-between-east-and-west-edited-by-bill-swainson-and-barbara-schwepcke-with-forewords-by-daniel-barenboim-and-mariam-c-sa/ |title=#Riveting Reviews: Rüdiger Görner reviews A NEW DIVAN: A LYRICAL DIALOGUE BETWEEN EAST AND WEST edited by Bill Swainson and Barbara Schwepcke, with forewords by Daniel Barenboim and Mariam C. Said |publisher=European Literature Network|date=5 January 2020 |access-date=14 January 2022}}

Her work draws on her interest in science and scientific enquiry (there were physicists in her family) and covers themes of displacement, loss and belonging.{{Cite web |url=http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=6167 |title=Lavinia Greenlaw – Poetry Archive |accessdate=14 June 2007}}{{Cite web |url=http://www.newstatesman.com/200103190042 |title=A girl in my head |accessdate=14 June 2007 |last=Allardice |first=Lisa |date=19 March 2001 |work=New Statesman}} Critics have seen her poetry as remarkable for its precision; her best contain a complexity and elusiveness that lead them to "appreciate with each re-reading".[http://www.laviniagreenlaw.org/books/ "Books"], Lavinia Greenlaw website.

Her biography notes: "She has written and adapted several dramas for radio, including Virginia Woolf's Night and Day, Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game, and a series on malaria called Five Fever Tales. She has made documentaries about Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop and several programmes about light, including trips to the Arctic midsummer and midwinter, the Baltic, the darkest place in England, light in London, and the solstices and equinoxes."

Greenlaw is also a memoirist. Kirkus Reviews summed up her 2007 coming-of-age book, The Importance of Music to Girls, by saying: "The taut, lyric thrum of Greenlaw's prose reflects her poet's skill....Well-written, bewitching and subtly dazzling."{{Cite magazine |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/lavinia-greenlaw/the-importance-of-music-to-girls/ |title=The Importance of Music to Girls |website=Kirkus Reviews |date=1 March 2008 |access-date=14 January 2022}} Some Answers Without Questions (2021), part memoir, part manifesto, was described by Hephzibah Anderson in The Observer as "a delight: approachable, rigorous and omnivorous in its frame of reference".{{Cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/aug/01/in-brief-annie-stanley-all-at-sea-some-answers-without-questions-unexplained-deaths |title=In brief: Annie Stanley, All at Sea; Some Answers Without Questions; Unexplained Deaths |first=Hephzibah |last=Anderson |newspaper=The Observer |date=1 August 2021}}

Greenlaw has lived in London for most of her life.{{Cite web |url=http://www.laviniagreenlaw.co.uk/lavinia_greenlaw_biography.htm |title=Lavinia Greenlaw Bio |accessdate=14 June 2007 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070205083756/http://www.laviniagreenlaw.co.uk/lavinia_greenlaw_biography.htm |archivedate= 5 February 2007 |url-status=dead }}{{cite web |url=http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/ecl/staff/l-greenlaw.php|title=Goldsmiths College > Department of English & Comparative Literature |accessdate=14 June 2007}} She has a daughter.{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/aug/12/fiction.features|title='I was the only punk in the village'|newspaper=The Observer|first=Alex|last=Clark|date=12 August 2007}}

Lavinia Greenlaw received an Eric Gregory Award in 1990, an Arts Council Writers' Award in 1995, a Cholmondeley Award, and a Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship. In 1994 she was chosen as one of 20 New Generation Poets, by a jury composed of Melvyn Bragg, Margaret Busby, Vicki Feather, Michael Longley, John Osborne and James Wood.Raphael Costambeys-Kempczynsi, [http://erea.revues.org/59 "'The world is round': mystification and the poetry of Lavinia Greenlaw"], E-rea, 6.1, 2008. In 1997, Greenlaw won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem for "A World Where News Travelled Slowly", the title poem from her second main collection.[http://www.forwardartsfoundation.org/forward-prizes-for-poetry/forward-alumni/ "Forward Alumni"], Forward Arts Foundation.

For her 2001 first novel, Mary George of Allnorthover, Greenlaw won the French Prix du Premier Roman.{{Cite web |url=http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/arts//author//lavinia_greenlaw/profile.html |title=Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog – film: Lavinia Greenlaw Profile |accessdate=14 June 2007 |work=Guardian Unlimited}} She has been shortlisted for a number of literary awards, including the Whitbread Book Award (now the Costa Book Awards) and the T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. Her sound work Audio Obscura won the 2011 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Her short story "We Are Watching Something Terrible Happening" was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2013.[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01hmfcs "Front Row's interview with Lavinia Greenlaw"], BBC Radio 4, 27 September 2013.

• The Cost of Getting Lost in Space (poetry), Turret Books, 1991, {{ISBN|978-0854690916}}
• Love from a Foreign City (poetry), Slow Dancer Press, 1992, {{ISBN|978-1-871033-18-2}}
• Night Photograph (poetry; shortlisted for Whitbread and Forward Poetry Prizes), Faber & Faber, 1993, {{ISBN|978-0-571-16894-1}}
• A World Where News Travelled Slowly (poetry), Faber, 1997, {{ISBN|978-0571326358}}
• Mary George of Allnorthover (novel; Prix du Premier Roman Etranger), Flamingo, 9 July 2001, {{ISBN|978-0-618-09523-0}}
• Minsk (poetry; shortlisted for T. S. Eliot, Forward and Whitbread Poetry Prizes), Faber, 2003, {{ISBN|978-0-571-22271-1}}
• Thoughts of a Night Sea (photographs by Garry Fabian Miller), Merrell, 2003, {{ISBN|978-1858942223}}
• An Irresponsible Age (novel), Fourth Estate, 2006, {{ISBN|978-0-00-715629-0}}
• The Importance of Music to Girls [https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312428372 (memoir)], Faber, 2007, {{ISBN|978-0-375-17454-4}}
• The Casual Perfect (poetry), Faber, 2011, {{ISBN|978-0-571-27816-9}}
• Questions of Travel: William Morris in Iceland (non-fiction), Notting Hill Editions, 2011, {{ISBN|978-190790318-2}}.
• A Double Sorrow: Troilus and Criseyde (poetry), Faber, 2014, {{ISBN|978-0-571-28454-2}}
• In the City of Love's Sleep (novel), Faber, 2018, {{ISBN|9780571337620}}
• The Built Moment (poetry), Faber, 2019, {{ISBN|978-0-571-347100}}
• Some Answers Without Questions (memoir/manifesto), Faber, 2021, {{ISBN|9780571368655}}
• The Vast Extent: On Seeing and Not Seeing Further (essays), Faber, 2024, {{ISBN|9780571355631}}
• Selected Poems, Faber, 2024, {{ISBN|9780571379194}}

• {{Cite book |title=After-Images:Modern Poetry in Translation |editor1=David J. Constantine |editor-link=David J. Constantine |editor2=H. Constantine |translator1=Lavinia Greenlaw |translator2=Tom Kuhn |translator3=Adrian Mitchell |publisher=MPT Books |date=24 October 2006 |isbn=978-0-9545367-6-3}}
• {{Cite book |publisher=Enitharmon Press |date=15 September 2008 |isbn=978-1-904634-75-1 |author=Noshi Gillani |translator=Lavinia Greenlaw |title=Poems}}

Greenlaw appeared as a "talking head" on the BBC documentaries Top of the Pops: The Story of 1976[https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00zwrn7/Top_of_the_Pops_The_Story_of_1976/ Top of the Pops: The Story of 1976], BBC Four, 1 April 2011. (2011) and The Joy of the Single[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nzchs The Joy of the Single], BBC Four, 26 November 2012. (2012).

{{Reflist|30em}}

• {{official|https://laviniagreenlaw.co.uk/}}
• [http://us.macmillan.com/author/laviniagreenlaw Lavinia Greenlaw at FSG]
• [http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.do?poetId=6167 Lavinia Greenlaw at the Poetry Archive]. Retrieved 26 October 2011.
• Charlotte Runcie, [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/10653510/Something-borrowed-something-blue.html "Something borrowed, something blue" (interview)], The Telegraph, 23 February 2014.
• [https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/lavinia-greenlaw(2891ab11-2d2f-4a2b-8322-1fcfa8cc1ded).html "Professor Lavinia Greenlaw"], Royal Holloway, University of London
• Hannah Peel: [http://www.hannahpeel.com/playlist/lavinia-greenlaw/ Memory Playlist by Lavinia Greenlaw]

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Category:1962 births

Category:Living people

Category:20th-century English poets

Category:20th-century English women writers

Category:21st-century English novelists

Category:21st-century English poets

Category:21st-century English women writers

Category:Academics of Goldsmiths, University of London

Category:Academics of Royal Holloway, University of London

Category:Academics of the University of East Anglia

Category:Alumni of Kingston University

Category:Alumni of the London College of Printing

Category:Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art

Category:English women memoirists

Category:English women novelists

Category:English women poets

Category:Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature

Category:Writers from London