Mark Ford

Mark Ford (born 1962) is a British poet. He is currently Professor of English in the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London.

Life Mark Ford was born in Nairobi, British Kenya, on 24 June 1962 to Donald and Mary Ford. His father worked for the airlines BOAC, then British Airways. As a result, he had a peripatetic childhood, moving 'to a new country roughly every 18 months', accompanied by a 'sense of rootlessness or of not belonging'.

After school in London, he attended Oxford University, graduating in 1983 with a First in English Literature. He then studied at Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar, before returning to Oxford to study for his doctorate, writing his thesis on the poetry of John Ashbery, supervised by John Bayley. After a number of years working as a lecturer in Oxford and London, he then moved to Japan, where he was Visiting Lecturer at Kyoto University between 1991-3.

Following this appointment, he worked as a freelance writer, principally reviewing poetry for The Guardian.

He is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books.