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Poet, author,
actor, director, broadcaster, & screenwriter
POET
Poetry Collections
Most recent -
Dancing the Impossible: New & Selected Poems (Poetry
Salzburg).
Other collections -
Discontinued Design (Venture Press); I, Odysseus;
Sunflower; Return to Zululand; Red Alert: this is a god warning; Jumping-Shoes
(all these by Sidgwick & Jackson);
With Janet Suzman at the National Poetry Centre, for the publication
of his Return to Zululand |
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from Return to Zululand
The light that surrounds these faces
Is as tough as the soles of the feet
That, hardened to rhino hide
By running on thorns and rocky outcrops,
Chased the Imperial Army from Isandhlwana. |
His poetry has been published in approximately 100 anthologies, including
The Methuen Book of Theatre Verse, 100 Major Modern Poets, The
1991 Arvon International Poetry Competition Anthology, The Ring of Words
(Arvon prizewinning anthology 1998), The 2002 Bridport
Prize Anthology, 100 Favourite Animal Poems, Laugh or Cry or Yawn, Tunes
on a Tin Whistle, The Sun Dancing, The Oxford Poetry Books, The Blue
Nose Poetry Anthology, 101 Favourite Poems, One River Many Creeks
and so on.
.
See under POET PERFORMER: CHILDREN
for a list of anthologies for children in which his poems have been
published.
More than 100 of his poems and translations have been broadcast on
radio and television in Britain, Europe, America, and Africa.
Prizes & Awards
Runner-up prizewinner in the 1991 Arvon International Poetry Competition,
commended in the 1998 Arvon; runner-up in both the 1999 and 2003 Peterloo
Competitions, runner-up in the 2002 Bridport Competition. Poet in Residence
at Fairleigh Dickinson University, New Jersey. Hooker Distinguished
Visiting Professor at McMaster University Ontario. Awarded a Cecil Day
Lewis Fellowship; awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship for 2000
- 2003. Poet in Residence Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond 1999 - 2000.
Leo is listed on the Poetry kit website 
Current Activities
Recent publications of Leo's poetry: in The Works(Macmillan 2002),101 Favourite Poems (Macmillan 2002), The Moonlit Stream (Oxford 2002), One River, Many Creeks (Macmillan 2003),The Poetry Store (Hodder), How to Embarrass Grown-ups (Macmillan 2004,) Orbis 2005 and in AGENDA (vol 39, number 4), Celebratory Issue for William Cookson, who, till his recent death, was sole editor of the magazine.
| Leo Aylen is that rarity, an extraordinarily effective poet
whose verse not only cries out to be spoken aloud but which also
survives on the printed page to communicate, most tellingly, to
the inward ear. His work has vitality, technical agility, considerable
subtlety and range. If, as I believe, poetry should be a living
organism, demonstrably of the here and now, this is it. |
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Charles Causley
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Leo Aylen's poems show us a passionate and venturesome traveller.
And yet the London in which he now works as a freelance writer
and broadcaster is also rawly present in his verse, a rundown,
menacing, Margaret Thatcher metropolis.
There is nothing safe and conventional about his writing. Vigour,
enjoyment of playing with the fire of words and images, and an
exuberant appetite for rhythms and sounds, are obvious characteristics
of his poetry. Dance, movement, physicality - musicality - are
other words that come to mind.
His instinct for the suitable length and shape of a poem is very
sure. And he is splendidly aware of the challenges and opportunities
which complex form offers. He responds with neatly-judged free
verse, with sonnets and vilanelles - and with (a favourite form
of his) sestinas. He acknowledges that poetry is an art in which
skill is won by toil, and in which experience, pain possibly,
and - by implication - maturity have an essential part.
As a poet he is unabashedly romantic, wholly unafraid of the bold,
or the dangerously vulnerable, statement of feeling. He possesses
the two qualities Robert Lowell said were needed in order to write
poetry - 'courage and a merciful heart' - and a third: a sense
of poetry as an act of celebration, an activity always to be pursued
with zest and delight. |
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Alan Brownjohn
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| I regard Leo Aylen as being a poet, unusually competent,
and unusually sincere. The competence is a part of his mastery
of classical poetry and his skill in translating it; the sincerity
is his own attitude to life today, concentrated into words that
really say what they mean. |
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John Bayley
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| Zany. Joyous. |
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Steve Ellis, TIMES LIT. SUPP
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| Leo Aylen is a pop poet, one of the few whose work looks
interesting on the page. Read or sung aloud his stomping rhythms
and often ingenious repetitions must be very effective indeed. |
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Julian Symons, PUNCH
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| Mr Aylen is a learned poet … Explosively floral. |
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Derek Stanford, BOOKS AND BOOKMEN
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| Leo Aylen is not afraid of common speech rhythms and lusty
colloquial phrases. Feeling, indignant, compassionate, he can
sum up a state of mind as well as any novelist. He knows how humanity
ticks. |
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Joan Forman, EASTERN DAILY PRESS
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| Leo Aylen is an accomplished poet. His imagery is tough and
earthy. An extraordinary book of portraits. |
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Michelene Wandor, TIME OUT
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| A talented poet. |
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Martin Booth, TRIBUNE
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| Classical in origin, dramatic in form, and extreme, even
apocalyptic, in imagery. |
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Geoff Page, CANBERRA TIMES
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| Aylen is direct and uncompromising, his language is clear,
his English is good, he scorns gimmickry and he projects a sharp
image. His work looks interesting on the printed page. Read and
sung his driving rhythm would have a strong appeal. |
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NORTHERN ADVOCATE, New Zealand
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| He is highly sensitive; he, as a recorder, can squeeze out
and enjoy all the juice that there is in the rhythms and associations
of today. |
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Alan Short, S.A.B.C.
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| Clarity and compelling narrative shape that seizes the reader's
attention. |
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Shirley Toulson, BRITISH BOOK NEWS
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| Work of outstanding insight. The verse is taut and rhythmic,
tightly structured, blossoming frequently into shining, subtle
imagery. |
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Joan Forman, EASTERN DAILY PRESS
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| The imaginative strength of the poetry is outstanding. His
intellectualism is balanced by a Zorba-like vitality and a fine
perception. |
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Gordon Strachan, BBC RADIO 4
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