Isabel Galleymore

Isabel Galleymore

Isabel Galleymore (b. 1988, London) was the first poet-in-residence at Tambopata Research Centre in the Amazon Rainforest. ‘The opportunity to encounter different types of creature –spider monkeys, pink-toed tarantulas, caiman — was irresistible’, she writes, and many of the poems in Significant Other display the fruits of that opportunity. Another residency in Cornwall gave her the opportunity to make a close study of local rockpools, and the collection is liberally dotted with sonnets about bivalves and barnacles, including the magnificent spiny cockle which gives the book its cover illustration, ‘let[ting] / its long pink foot slip like a leg / from the slit of its crenulated skirt’.

Galleymore works as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham; her poetry appeared in Carcanet’s New Poetries VII anthology, and in a pamphlet from Worple Press, Dazzle Ship. She’s currently working on a new pamphlet of prose poem fragments, tentatively titled Cyanic Pollens.

Forward Prizes History:

• 2019 Forward Prizes for Best First Collection, shortlisted for Significant Other (Carcanet)