Ian Seed
Author, Translator

Ian Seed is an award-winning poet, prose poet, translator, short-story writer, essayist and editor.

His collection of prose poetry, New York Hotel (Shearsman, 2018) was featured on BBC Radio Merseyside and was a TLS Book of the Year, while Identity Papers (Shearsman, 2016) and Makers of Empty Dreams (Shearsman, 2014) were showcased on BBC Radio Three’s The Verb. Ian’s books of translation include The Thief of Talant (Wakefield Press, US, 2016), the first translation into English of Pierre Reverdy’s innovative long poem, Le voleur de Talan. It was long-listed (top ten in poetry) for the Millions Best Translated Book award. Ian's own work has been translated into French, Italian, Romanian, Spanish and Urdu.

His writing appears in a number of anthologies, such as The Best British Poetry (Salt, 2014), The Best Small Fictions (Braddock Avenue Books, 2017), The Forward Book of Poetry (Faber & Faber, 2017), The Encounter: a handbook of poetic practice (Parlor Press, 2022), and Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom (MadHat Press, 2023).

Ian has been running writing seminars and workshops in a wide range of academic and community settings, mainly in Lancashire, for the best part of two decades. Before that, he worked in different countries in Europe as an English teacher, technical translator and project manager. He now lives near Lancaster, where he enjoys, amongst other things, walking with family in the Morecambe Bay, listening to blues, country and rock 'n' roll, and early morning jogging in the rain.

To find out a little more, see https://ianseed.co.uk/background

Ian's latest book, Night Window, is available from Shearsman here: https://www.shearsman.com/store/Ian-Seed-Night-Window-p584010639

Update Jan. 2025: I'm looking forward to the publication of My Outsize Hank Williams Cowboy Hat, a chapbook of small fictions. It's coming out in the spring with Sacred Parasite Books (ed. Kevin Tosca). See: https://www.instagram.com/sacredparasitebooks/p/DD4flmyt_Dl/

Photo credit: Jonathan Bean, for Lancaster Litfest.