John McCullough

Latest News just below

 "Thrilled to announce my collection Reckless Paper Birds has won this year's Hawthornden prize for literature, awarded for overall best UK book of the year! It was against stiff competition from many excellent novels, biographies and other poetry collections. Honoured to join the list of previous winners that includes writers I admire  like Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, Geoffrey Hill, Ali Smith and Alice Oswald."

Hello, and welcome to my website. My poems have appeared in places including Poetry Review, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Poetry London and Best British Poetry. My first collection The Frost Fairs (Salt, 2011) won the Polari First Book Prize. It was a Book of the Year for The Independent and The Poetry School, and a summer read for The Observer. My second collection Spacecraft (Penned in the Margins, 2016) was named one of The Guardian’s Best Books for Summer 2016, and was shortlisted for the Ledbury-Forte prize. Reckless Paper Birds was published with Penned in the Margins in May 2019. It was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award.

Commissioned Work

I have written a number of commissioned poems. These include ‘1001 Nights’, for an event at the British Film Institute that celebrated works including Pasolini’s adaptation, The Flower of One Thousand and One Nights. My poem ‘Antinous’ was written for the British Museum, and was inspired by the bust of Hadrian’s lover on display there. Most recently, I was commissioned to write ‘The Zigzag Path’ for the BBC’s celebration of National Poetry Day 2018. It is featured as a video poem on the BBC Arts website. (To view video click here)

Click below to view promotional video for "Reckless Paper Birds"

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