Simon Jenner

Simon Jenner was born in Cuckfield in 1959. Failing everything except art, he learnt to fly instead: discovering poetry forestalled a career in airframes. Belatedly educated at Leeds, then Cambridge, his PhD was paradoxically in ’Oxford Poetry of the 1940s’. Simon’s been Director of Survivors' Poetry since 2003, and from 2008-10, also Royal Literary Fund Fellow, at UEL and Chichester. Simon’s poetry collections are About Bloody Time (2006), Wrong Evenings (2011), Two for Joy (2013) all from Waterloo. Perdika/Poet in the City brought out Pessoa (2009) and commissioned close translations of Propertius Elegies Book I. Agenda Edition’s Airs to Another Planet on music poems is forthcoming. In 2016 his poem ‘Peter Philips’ Part Book Talks to Breugel’ was a prize-winner in the National Poetry Competition. One of six Poet in the City Residencies, Hackney, which launched in 2014 also maked a turning point. It’s where the kernel of Simon’s first play has developed, now being developed by a Guildford company. One adptation of a novel based on First World War flying, and two other plays, one based on a friend’s sectioning, are in development. Simon also writes music criticism.

Recent reviews:

Review: Oliver!

There’s not a moment in this two-hours-40 where you’re not at the edge of your seat. The best musical revival this year. Don’t wait till it transfers to the West End.