Vicki Feaver is a poet who has lived in Scotland since 2000 when she moved to Dunsyre, South Lanarkshire. She previously taught creative writing at the University of Chichester where she is an Emeritus Professor.
She has received many awards and prizes for her poetry; Her poem ‘Judith’ won the 1993 Forward Prize for the Best Single Poem. The Handless Maiden (Cape, 1994) won a Heineman Prize, a Cholmondely Award and was also shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. The Book of Blood (Cape, 2006) was shortlisted for the Costa and Forward prizes. Her most recent collection I Want! I Want! (Cape, 2019) was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize. She is a recipient of a Hawthornden Fellowship, and an Arts Council Award.
Feaver has racked up the air miles travelling to America, Australia, India, Italy, France and Iraqi Kurdistan, to read her poetry. She was one of three poets invited to write on the themes of older age by the Baring Foundation, and her poems on the subject can be found in the resulting anthology, Second Wind (Saltire Society, 2015).
Recently, she has written poems on the effects of living with the onset of Parkinson’s disease.
– “Apart from my family, poetry is the most important thing in my life”, she tells us.