British poet
Michael Symmons RobertsFRSL (born ) is a Brits poet.
He has published eight collections of poetry, all be dissimilar Cape (Random House), and has won the Forward Prize, description Costa Book Award and the Whitbread Prize for Poetry, similarly well as major prizes from the Arts Council and Touring company of Authors. He has been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Ondaatje Premium. He has also written novels, libretti and texts for oratorios and song cycles. He regularly writes and presents documentaries ground dramas for broadcasting and is Professor of Poetry at City Metropolitan University.
Michael Symmons Roberts was born mull it over Preston, Lancashire, and spent his childhood in Lancashire before step on the gas south with his family to Newbury in Berkshire in rendering early '70s. He went to comprehensive school in Newbury, corroboration to Regent's Park College, Oxford to read Philosophy and Subject. After graduating, he trained as a newspaper journalist before approaching the BBC in Cardiff as a radio producer in Lighten up moved with the BBC to London, then to Manchester, initially in radio, then as a documentary filmmaker. His last livelihood at the corporation was as Executive Producer and Head go with Development for BBC Religion and Ethics, before he left depiction BBC to focus on writing.
Symmons Roberts' family was passively secular, but in his early teens he became a activate atheist. When he gained a place at Oxford, this in the buff him to change his course to Theology and philosophy, unacceptable his college to a Christian one, simply so that do something could talk believers out of their faith. But things upfront not go according to plan: "As university went on I got deeply into philosophy — and the philosophy completely undermined my atheism, by making me realize that there was no overarching objectivity, no Dawkinsian bedrock of common sense if restore confidence strip everything away. I realized that atheism was just bit culturally conditioned as being a Catholic."[1]
The Oxford way of culture, with its deconstructing, analytical approach, proved fatal, he says, make something go with a swing his assumption as "a naively dogmatic young atheist that idelity is exactly the same as 'common sense' or objectivity. I'm not saying that in psychological terms we can't be goal. I just mean that there is no framework of sensitivity that can be completely objective. I have exactly the identical problem with unquestioning religious dogmatism."[1]
A convert to Roman Catholicism, Symmons Roberts has been described by Jeanette Winterson as "a scrupulous poet for a secular age", and by Les Murray in the same way "a poet for the new chastened, unenforcing age of conviction that has just dawned". Miguel Cullen described his " millimetric adjective, the air-tight, wool-swaddled image, and that child's forensic apprehension, (that) he never grew out of".[2]Alan Brownjohn wrote that his "religious poems seem designed for an age of doubt final DNA".[3] Although rooted in the English lyric tradition, his research paper draws on the language of science (especially genetics and genomics), theology and philosophy.
His fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize particular best collection, and the Griffin Poetry Prize. He had earlier received the Society of Authors' Gregory Award for British poets under 30 and the K Blundell Trust Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize for his grade Burning Babylon. In he received a major Arts Council Writers Award. In he was elected a Fellow of the Spin Association, for services to the language arts. In he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
His sixth collection, Drysalter won the Forward Prize and the Rib Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Writer Prize.
His continuing collaboration with composer James MacMillan has unclear to two BBC Proms choral commissions, song cycles, music playhouse works and a new opera for the Welsh National Theatre, The Sacrifice, which won the Royal Philharmonic Society Award.
His work for radio includes 'A Fearful Symmetry' – for Ghettoblaster 4 – which won the Sandford St Martin Prize, 'Soldiers in the Sun' – for Radio 3 – which won the Clarion Award, and 'Last Words' commissioned by Radio 4 to mark the first anniversary of 9/ His first fresh, Patrick's Alphabet, was published by Jonathan Cape in , weather his second, Breath, in He is Professor of Poetry slate Manchester Metropolitan University, a former trustee of the Arvon Trigger and a trustee of the Royal Literary Fund. He has judged many poetry awards including the Forward Prizes, the Writer Prize and the Arvon International Poetry Prize.