Collection: Elaine Feinstein

Elaine Feinstein was born in Liverpool, brought up in Leicester, and educated at Newnham College, Cambridge. She has written for The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, the New York Review of Books and other papers. She has written fourteen novels; radio plays; television dramas, and five biographies. Her poems have been widely anthologised, and two were included in Christopher Ricks's Oxford Book of English Verse. Her most recent books of poems are Daylight (Carcanet, 1997), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Gold (Carcanet, 2000); and Talking to the Dead (Carcanet, 2007). Her Collected Poems and Translations (2002) was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. "She is an extraordinarily fine poet. She has a sinewy, tenacious way of penetrating and exploring her subject that seems to me unique. Her simple, clean language follows the track of the nerves. There is nothing hit or miss, nothing for effect, nothing false. Reading her poems one feels cleansed and sharpened." Ted Hughes