Alice Oswald and her Love for Flora

Alice Oswald is a contemporary British poet. Born in 1966, she currently lives in Devon, UK. She attended grammar school and later went to Oxford to read Classics at New College. After her studies, she worked as a gardener, which influenced her development as a poet. She started writing poetry in classical traditions. Most of the poems in the first collection, The Thing in the Gap-Stone Stile, published in 1996, reflect her love for flora. The long poem, The Men of Gotham, is this collection’s most critically reviewed one. This collection was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize in 1997, and it won the Forward Poetry Prize in 1996 for being the best first collection. Her second collection of poems, Dart, combines verse and prose; it was published in 2002 and voices the tale of the river Dart in Devon. It won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2002. This poem has a dream-like quality. It is a well-researched poem. She spent three years on data collection. She spoke to individuals who use the river in their day-to-day activities, resulting in the poem that talks about the River Dart from different points of view. Her following collection, Woods etc. (2005), was shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. She is the author of 11 collections of poetry. Critically acclaimed collections include – Weeds and Wild Flowers (2009), A Sleepwalk on the Screen (2009), Memorial (2011) and Falling Awake (2016). She received the Eric Gregory Award in 1994. She was the first woman appointed to Oxford University as a professor of poetry in 2019. Peter Oswald, the famous playwright, is her spouse.

” Body” is one of her most popular poems.

WORKS CITED

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alice-oswald

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/jul/22/alice-oswald-interview-falling-awake

Dr Aswathy Aravindakshan

Dr Aswathy Aravindakshan is a teacher, bilingual writer and artist with over two decades of experience in teaching English language and literature. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of English at NSS College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Her blog, ashlit.in brings together academic resources, creative writing in Malayalam and English, and visual art. The platform features lecture notes, study materials, poems, reflections, short prose, and a curated collection of her paintings. Through this space, she seeks to foster learning, creativity, and meaningful engagement with literature and the arts.