Ian Seed

Ian Seed is an award-winning poet, translator, short-story writer, essayist and editor. With a surreal edge, his writing often exposes the comical void at the heart of many of our everyday encounters. His collection of prose poetry, New York Hotel (Shearsman, 2018) was featured on BBC Radio Merseyside and was a TLS Book of the Year. His collections of prose poetry, Identity Papers (Shearsman, 2016) and Makers of Empty Dreams (Shearsman, 2014) were showcased on BBC Radio Three’s The Verb. Ian Seed’s books of translation include The Thief of Talant (Wakefield Press, US, 2016), the first translation into English of Pierre Reverdy’s innovative long poem, Le Voleur de Talan. It was longlisted (top ten in poetry) for the Best Translated Book award.

His work appears in a number of anthologies, such as The Best British Poetry (Salt, 2014), The Best Small Fictions (Braddock Avenue Books, 2017), The Forward Book of Poetry (Faber & Faber, 2017), and The Encounter: A Handbook of Poetic Practice (Parlor Press, 2022), and has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Urdu.

Ian Seed has been running writing seminars and workshops in a wide range of academic and community settings for the best part of two decades. Before embarking on a career in writing, he worked in different countries in Europe as an English teacher, technical translator and project manager. He now lives near Lancaster, where he enjoys walking with his family in the Morecambe Bay area, spoiling their cat, and early morning jogging in the rain.