Aidan Semmens

Aidan Semmens is the author of six volumes of poetry, including four from Shearsman Books – A Stone Dog (2011), Uncertain Measures (2014), Life Has Become More Cheerful (2017) and There Will Be Singing (2020). The Jazz Age, a sequence of surreal and comic vignettes casting historical characters into anachronistic situations, was chosen by Salt Publishing to relaunch its Modern Poets series in 2022. He is also editor of the online poetry magazine Molly Bloom, and before moving to Orkney edited an anthology of Suffolk poetry, By the North Sea (Shearsman, 2013). He is widely published in poetry magazines and has given many readings of his work, including at festivals in Berlin, Aldeburgh and Dorset.

Professionally, he has been a sportswriter, a news columnist, and a sub-editor for newspapers including The Daily Mirror, The Independent, the i, and for many years the News of the World, where he specialised in sport. He has coached young reporters in journalistic writing skills and wrote the style guide for the Ipswich Evening Star, where he was chief sub-editor. He has also written for magazines on subjects ranging from medieval church art and architecture to photography, travel and green issues.