Linda France

Linda France is a British poet, writer and editor. She has published eight full-length poetry collections, a number of pamphlets, and was editor of the influential anthology, Sixty Women Poets. France is the author of The Toast of the Kit-Cat Club, a verse biography of the eighteenth-century traveler and social rebel, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She has won numerous awards and fellowships, including the National Poetry Competition in 2013 and the Laurel Prize in 2022.

Early life and education Linda France was born in Wallsend, Newcastle upon Tyne on 21 May 1958. When France was five years old, her family moved to Dorset, when her father's employer established a new paint manufacturing business. In an interview in 2016, France revealed that moving to Dorset, with its own unique dialect, was an influential moment in her life. She stated: "The effect of that linguistic shift made a writer out of me – the shedding of my native tongue (Geordie), and the language of the hearth to try to belong 'elsewhere' snapped a root that could never be mended and kept me, like most writers, on the edge, always the observer, the listener."

France attended the University of Leeds, studying English and History. After graduating, France lived in London and later moved to Amsterdam. In 1981, she returned to England, settling in Northumberland with her two sons. The family lived for ten years in a home without electricity.

Career

France's work includes themes of landscape, nature, love and identity.

France's second collection, The Gentleness of the Very Tall, was published by Bloodaxe in 1995 and was long-listed for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. In 1997, Bloodaxe published Storyville, a collaboration authored by France, artist Birtley Aris and musicians Keith Morris and Lewis Watson.

Bloodaxe published, France's Simultaneous Dress in 2002. The poem, Bernard and Cerinthe, included in the collection, was awarded the National Poetry Competition in 2013. Published in 2022, The Knucklebone Floor won her the Laurel Prize.

She was the inaugural Environmental Poet of the Year 2022–23 in the Michael Marks Awards for Poetry Pamphlets for Letters to Katłįà published by The Wordsworth Trust.

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024.

France lives near Hadrian's Wall, near Corbridge, Northumberland.

Poetry collections —(2022), Startling, Faber & New Writing North, —(2022), The Knucklebone Floor, Smokestack Books, —(2016), Reading the Flowers, ARC Publications, —(2010), You are Her, ARC Publications, —(2009), Book of Days, ARC Publications, —(2002), The Simultaneous Dress, Bloodaxe Books —(1997), Storyville, Bloodaxe Books —(1995), The Gentleness of the Very Tall, Bloodaxe Books, —(1992), Red, Bloodaxe Books,

Selected publications —(1993), Sixty Women Poets, Bloodaxe Books, —(2005), The Toast of the Kit-Cat Club, Bloodaxe Books,

Awards —(2013), National Poetry Competition, Bernard and Cerinthe —(1997), Tyrone Guthrie Award —(1994), Arts Foundation Poetry Fellowship