Background

Jeremy Reed was born in 1951 in Bailiwick of Jersey.

Education

Reed received his B.A. with honours and Ph.D. from the University of Essex in Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom.

Career

Reed began publishing poems in magazines and small publications in the 1970s. His influences include Rimbaud, Artaud, Jean Genet, J.G. Ballard, David Bowie and Iain Sinclair. Reed has a long history of publication with both Creation Books, Enitharmon Press, Shearsman Books and Peter Owen, however his Selected Poems is published by Penguin Books. His recent art criticism appears in Cornermag: "Gareth Lloyd Leaving the 20th Century". A recent novel was "The Grid".

Besides, Reed has published over 50 works in 25 years. He has written more than two dozen books of poetry, 12 novels, and volumes of literary and music criticism. He has also published translations of Montale, Cocteau, Nasrallah, Adonis, Bogary and Hölderlin. His own work has been translated in more than a dozen languages.

He has also collaborated with the musician Itchy Ear. They perform live under the name "The Ginger Light". "The Ginger Light" regularly perform at The National Portrait Gallery, London and The Horse Hospital, London. Their 2012 album "Big City Dilemma" was described as "a trippy comedown machine, taking you by your collar and dragging you along London pavements".

In addition, Jeremy Reed has occasionally taught at the University of Essex and the University of London.

Achievements

• Jeremy Reed is the winner of prestigious literary prizes like the Eric Gregory award in 1982 and the Somerset Maugham Award in 1985. He has also received awards from Ingram Merrill, Royal Literary Fund and the Arts Council. In addition, he has won the Poetry Society's European Translation Prize.
  
  Besides, his biggest fans are J.G. Ballard, Pete Doherty and Bjork who has called his work "the most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world".

Works

More photos

• book

  • Saint Billie
  • The King Of Carnaby Street
  • The Dilly: A Secret History of Piccadilly Rent Boys
  • Dicing for Pearls
  • A Stranger on Earth: The Life and Work of Anna Kavan
  • Red-Haired Android
  • Delirium
  • Bitter Blue
  • Marc Almond: The Last Star
  • Brian Jones: The Last Decadent
  • Piccadilly Bongo
  • Voodoo Excess
  • Caligula: Divine Carnage
  • The Pleasure Chateau: The Omnibus
  • Madness - the Price of Poetry
  • Here Comes the Nice
  • Red Hot Lipstick
  • Dorian: A Sequel to The Picture of Dorian Gray
  • Isidore
  • Inhabiting Shadows
  • Chasing Black Rainbows: A Novel About Antonin Artaud
  • Boy Caesar
  • When The Whip Comes Down
  • Nothing But a Star
  • Diamond Nebula
  • Duck and Sally Inside
  • Bona Vada
  • Black Sugar: Gay, Lesbian & Heterosexual Love Poems
  • Bona Drag
  • The Grid
  • This is How You Disappear

Personality

Quotes from others about the person

• Pete Doherty: "Jeremy Reed is a legend. What more can you fucking ask?"
  
  J.G. Ballard: "Jeremy Reed’s talent is almost extraterrestrial in its brilliance. He is Rimbaud reconfigured as the Man who fell to Earth, a visitor from deep space whose time machine was designed by Lautreamont and de Sade, and powered by the most exotic fuels the imagination has ever devised."
  
  Michael Bracewell: "In its detail and ambition alone, Orange Sunshine confirms Reed’s place as a great lyric poet of pop’s shadow."
  
  Bjork: "The most beautiful, outrageously brilliant poetry in the world."
  
  Edmund White: "When Patti Smith meets Rimbaud at Graceland, the result is Jeremy Reed’s Heartbreak Hotel."
  
  Richard Hell: "Jeremy Reed is the real definition of British poetry now and deserves to be worshipped himself."
  
  Andrew Loog Oldham: "The man is light worlds apart from his contemporaries in poetry."
  
  Seamus Heane: "Reed’s poetry is full of rich and careful writing, dense with pleasure in words that pleasure the world and waken us to its lovely surprises."

Interests

• Writers

  J. G. Ballard, Iain Sinclair

• Music & Bands

  David Bowie

Connections

colleague:

Itchy Ear