Angela Kirby (née Birtwistle; born 4 July 1932) is an English poet and non-fiction writer. Shoestring Press have published five of her poetry collections.
Born 4 July 1932 in rural Lancashire, England, the eighth and last child of a cotton-mill owner James Astley Birtwistle and his wife Muriel Mary (née Marwood). [1][2][3] Her eldest sister was the poet and gallery owner, Iris (IM) Birtwistle. A brother, Col. Michael Albert Astley Birtwistle, was a High Sheriff of Lancashire, and she was a cousin of race horse trainer Monica Dickinson (née Birtwistle), the mother of Michael Dickinson. She is the grandmother of Marine Sam AlexanderMC killed while on a patrol in 2011 Afghanistan in 2011 by an improvised explosive device (IED).
After her divorce in 1975, Kirby worked as a chef, a garden designer, freelance journalist and non-fiction writer on food and gardening.[4] Her first book, Fast Cook was published by Hutchinson in 1982 and other non-fiction books followed until 1998.
With the encouragement of her sister Iris (IM) Birtwistle she began to write poetry as a child and was first published in 1960 but more regularly from 1981.[2] From 1990 she began to concentrate on poetry, becoming published and anthologised,[3] read on BBC TV[citation needed] and Radio 4[citation needed] and winning the BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year in 1996[citation needed] and 2001.[5][1][bettersourceneeded]
Bibliography
Poetry collections
2004: Mr Irresistible (Shoestring)
2008: Dirty Work (Shoestring)
2013: The Scent of Winter (Shoestring)
2015: The Days After Always, New and Selected Poems (Shoestring)
2019: Look Left, Look Right (Shoestring)
2022: Where the Dead Walk (Shoestring)
Non-fiction
1982: Fast Cook, Good Food for Busy People (Hutchinson)
1987: Blooming Ingenious, the impoverished gardener’s guide (Souvenir)
1989: Fragrance in the Home (Tigerprint)
1997: Gardening in Small Spaces (Pavilion)
1998: The Rose Garden, a journal (Friedman Fairfax)
Editor
2008: When Leaf and Note are Gone, Poems of I M Birtwistle (with Anne Stewart) (Buff)
References
1 2 3 Who's Who in Catholic Life, Joseph Kelly. Universe Media Group Ltd (2013) p.307 ISBN978-1904657866