Michael Schmidt Biography
Michael Schmidt, born in Mexico City, is a poet, a novelist, a translator, and an academic. He has written more than 15 books, including five collections of poetry, the latest of which, New and Collected Poems, was published in 2009. His work showcases his extensive breadth of knowledge, often drawing from a multitude of disparate sources ranging from Homer to Boris Pasternak. John Fuller describes Schmidt’s writing as having “natural enthusiasm … melancholy precision and imagination.” Helen Dunmore echoes Fuller’s characterization of the sentiment in Schmidt’s work with her assertion that he is “always a stringent poet, never shy of painful truth.”
Schmidt is the founder, editor, and managing director of Carcanet Press Limited and general editor of PN Review. He is currently professor of poetry and convener of the creative writing program at the University of Glasgow (UK).
She spun a line. She knew he was listening to her.
She spun it and he took the fraying ends.
Whatever she was saying, it was cotton,
...
When I cannot believe,
The brown herds still move across green fields
Into the tufty hills, and I was born
Higher, where I could watch them as a bird might.
...
'Ibelieve it would go ill with many of us, if we were faced with a
strong temptation, and I suspect that with many of us it does go ill.'
—Ivy Compton Burnett
He set out on the innocent exodus. He went at Easter
...
It was the fruit I wanted, not the nest.
The nest was hanging like the richest fruit
against the sun. I took the nest
...
You with the knees of a fish,
You with the fish's ears, the tongue in your round
Mouth that's nibbling the sweet air,
You with a fish's patience, on your side
...
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