The founder of Aldeburgh poetry festival, Michael Laskey, is to receive the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, it has been announced. Laskey, aged 81, who was once shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize, said he was “astonished” by the news, adding: "I never imagined my poems would receive such extraordinary public recognition or that my name could ever appear on the same list as some of the poets whose work I've looked up to and loved for years."

Laskey's Collected Poems were published by Smith/Doorstop just a month ago. The poet laureate, Simon Armitage, said: "Michael is an incredibly gifted poet and is highly deserving of the King's Gold Medal for Poetry. Reading through [Laskey's] Collected Poems, I was struck by how deceptively simple the poems are: apparently effortless, domestic, calm in voice and clear in their descriptions and observations — yet so often, in fact almost always, deeply moving, with last lines that cause an involuntary intake of breath, a wobble of the heart, or shiver of the spine."

Michael Laskey, who was born in Lichfield in Staffordshire and now lives in Suffolk, saw his first publication, Cloves of Garlic, in 1988 become a joint winner of the Poetry Business pamphlet competition. He was awarded a British Empire Medal for services to contemporary poetry in 2015.

He has published six full poetry collections, with one collection, The Tightrope Wedding, published in 1999, shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize. He is also an editor and tutor with many years experience of promoting contemporary poetry. He founded the international Aldeburgh poetry festival in 1989 and directed it through its first decade. In 2008 he stepped down as chairman, but continued to be closely associated with the festival until 2014.

He also founded the poetry magazine Smiths Knoll with Roy Blackman in 1991. After Blackman’s death in 2002, he went on editing it with Joanna Cutts until 2012 when it ceased publication. He published pamphlets under the Smiths Knoll imprint until 2016, and still continues his work as an editor with The Garlic Press, which he established in 2003, and which principally publishes Suffolk-based poets.

On his website he describes himself  as "a long-term poetry activist". He was a founding member of the East Suffolk Poetry Workshop group which has met monthly for 30 years. A regular tutor for the Arvon Foundation, he currently leads Cut Loose Saturday morning writing sessions – with Dean Parkin – originally at the arts centre in Halesworth, which have now migrated to online sessions on Zoom.

https://poetryarchive.org/poet/michael-laskey/