Matthew Caley London Seminar 2024/25

About Matthew Caley View Profile

Matthew Caley’s 7th collection, To Abandon Wizardry, is published by Bloodaxe in November 2023. Since his debut, Thirst [ Slow Dancer, 1999] was nominated for The Forward Prize for Best First Collection, his work has been widely anthologised and appeared in many magazines, websites and journals. He has given many readings both here and abroad. 

In addition to being a regular tutor/mentor for The Poetry School in London, he has recently held Poetry/Creative Writing posts at St Andrews University [twice], at The University of Winchester, and Royal Holloway University London. He gave the StAnza 2020 Lecture in March. Trawl, a video-piece made in collaboration with Steve Smart and Alex South and commissioned by StAnza 2020, was shown there and at poem-film Festivals in Berlin and Texas. He published a pamphlet of loose versions of 19th/20th Century French poets Prophecy is Easy, with Blueprint Press, in 2020. He is a member of the scientific and organizing committee for the International Semiotics and Visual Communication conference – Cyprus University of Technology and has three times given key-note talks there. 

He previously taught in Art & Design for many years, collaborated with artist and musicians, co-edited and wrote for a book on the pop song in cinema, and before that was involved in design for the arts and music industries, co-designing, amongst other things, the packaging for Prefab Sprout’s debut LP Swoon. 

‘Chief among British poets Caley takes seriously the vision of synesthetic abundance laid out in Mallarme’s essay ‘Crisis and Verse’…[ ] Caley is a great poet of transposition and vibration… [ ] Caley at his very best, an offhand philosopher and bard of the demi-monde, gently blowing our minds.’ – Dai George POETRY WALES