Cliff Yates

Cliff Yates is a poet. His various collections include Henry’s Clock (smith/doorstop, 1999) which won both the Aldeburgh first collection prize and the Poetry Business book & pamphlet competition, and Selected Poems, a smith/doorstop ebook (2014). He received an Arts Council England Writer’s Award for Frank Freeman’s Dancing School (Salt, 2009; KFS, 2015) and an Arts Council England Grant for the Arts for Jam (smith/doorstop, 2016). Pamphlets include 14 Ways of Listening to the Archers, Emergency Rations and Bike, Rain.

He wrote Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School (Poetry Society,1999; 2004) during his time as Poetry Society poet-in-residence, following the success of his students in poetry competitions. He publishes widely on creative writing and has published short stories, criticism and poetics. His teaching has been the subject of feature articles in the TES and the Guardian and he has played a leading part in a number of Poetry Society educational initiatives.

He left school at sixteen and did a variety of jobs before returning to full time education. A former English teacher and Deputy Head at Maharishi School, he has also worked as a a teacher of Transcendental Meditation and as a lecturer in creative writing. He has led courses and workshops for the Arvon Foundation, the Poetry Society, the Poetry School, the Poetry Business, the British Council, colleges, universities and schools in the UK and abroad. In 2006 he completed a PhD in Poetry & Poetics.