Karen McCarthy Woolf

Karen McCarthy Woolf writes and edits poetry that connects personal experience with ecological and cultural inquiry. An Aviary of Small Birds, published by Carcanet in 2014, is her debut full collection and an elegiac response to the death of her son in childbirth. Its emotional movement is deliberately non-linear, using birds, weather, and the natural world to approach grief, memory, and renewal. The collection was shortlisted for the Forward Felix Dennis Prize and the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and was selected as an Observer book of the year. McCarthy Woolf later published Seasonal Disturbances and edited anthologies including Ten: The New Wave and Ten: Poets of the New Generation for Bloodaxe. Editing anthologies and serving as a Complete Works fellow connect her to efforts widening representation in British poetry. An Aviary of Small Birds remains the defining starting point for her poetry, joining formal control with intimate, nature-attentive mourning.