Michael Schmidt is a Mexican-British poet

Poet

A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...

, author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 and scholar. He studied at Harvard and at Wadham College, Oxford

Oxford

The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...

. He is currently Professor of Poetry at Glasgow University, where he is convener of the Creative Writing

Creative writing

Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

 M.Litt programme. He is founder (1969) and editorial and managing director of Carcanet Press

Carcanet Press

Carcanet Press is a publisher, primarily of poetry, based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1969 by Michael Schmidt.Carcanet Press is now in its fourth decade. In 2000 it was named the Sunday Times millennium Small Publisher of the Year...

 and a founder (1973) and general editor of PN Review. A fellow of the Royal Society of Literature

Royal Society of Literature

The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...

, he received an OBE

Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

 in 2006 for services to poetry. His literary career has been described as having "a strong sense of internationalism and cultural ‘connectedness’". Schmidt refers to himself in his book Lives of the Poets as ‘an Anglophone Mexican publisher’.

Selected bibliography

• The Colonist (novel) (1983)
• The Dresden Gate (novel) (1988)
• Selected Poems, 1972-1997 (1997)
• Lives of the Poets (Phoenix, 1998) ISBN 978-0753807453

• The Story of Poetry: From Caedmon to Caxton; From Skelton to Dryden; From Pope to Burns (three volumes) (2001–2006)
• The First Poets: Lives of the Ancient Greek Poets (2004)
• The Harvill Book of Twentieth century Poetry in English (1999, 2005) (editor)
• The Resurrection of the Body (poems) (2007)

External links

• Schmidt's website
• Biography on Carcanet Press
• Profile on Contemporary Writers
• "What, How Well, Why?" -- Schmidt's Lecture from StAnza, Scotland's annual poetry festival
• Podcast Interview with Schmidt by André Naffis-Sahely