Gillian Clarke was born in Cardiff, and lives on a smallholding in Ceredigion, where she and her architect husband have had 10,600 native trees planted. The National Poet of Wales, 2008-2016, she was awarded the Queen’s Gold medal for Poetry in 2010, and the First Minister of Wales’s Special Award, 2023. She is President of Ty Newydd, the Welsh writers centre, which she co-founded. Recent publications: Selected Poems, Picador, 2016, Roots Home, Essays and a Journal, Carcanet, 2021, her version of the 7th century Welsh poems, Y Gododdin, Faber, 2021, and The Silence, her tenth collection of poems, Carcanet, Spring, 2024.