Kieron Winn has been called ‘the poet of intimacy and tenderness de nos jours’ (by N. S. Thompson), and ‘one of the best formal poets in the UK’ (by A. M. Juster). His poems appear in magazines such as The London Magazine, New Statesman, The Spectator and The Times Literary Supplement, as well as in anthologies and on the BBC.
His poetry has been praised by, among others, Melvyn Bragg, Clive James and Christopher Ricks. His first collection is The Mortal Man, which was reviewed in journals including Agenda and The Times Literary Supplement; see the home page for details.
In 2018 he read from his poems in Dove Cottage, the first poet to do so in recent decades. In 2021 he was the first poet in residence at Rydal Mount since Wordsworth’s time.
He was educated at Tonbridge School, where he was later a teacher, and read English at Christ Church, Oxford, where he received a doctorate for a thesis on Herbert Read and T. S. Eliot. He has twice won the University of Oxford’s most valuable literary award, the English Poem on a Sacred Subject Prize. In 2018-19 he was artist in residence at Lady Margaret Hall.
He is probably the most experienced creative writing teacher in Oxford; he also teaches literature, primarily poetry from the Romantics to the present. He is happy to work on creative writing in all genres, but his speciality is teaching the traditional techniques of rhythm and rhyme, and showing how they help to make energetic, inventive and memorable poems. He regularly teaches for Oxford colleges, including Hertford, Regent’s Park and Wycliffe Hall; for the Stanford University in Oxford programme; and for Advanced Studies in England in Bath.
He is married and lives on Osney Island in Oxford and on Beacon Hill in Penrith, at the edge of the Lake District.