Book of Isaac, The

As a student at Cambridge University in the 1970s, Aidan Semmens was chairman of the Cambridge Poetry Society, co-editor of the influential Perfect Bound magazine and winner of the Chancellor's Medal for an English Poem in 1978, the same year his first pamphlet of verse appeared in print in the UK. After that, like his poetic hero George Oppen, he stopped writing poetry for some years. Since he resumed, his poems have appeared in print and online in magazines including Jacket, Jack, Shearsman, Shadowtrain, Stride, Great Works, Free Verse, Blackbox Manifold, Likestarlings, Poetry Wales, Tears In The Fence and Notre Dame Review. His first full-length collection, A Stone Dog, was published by Shearsman Books in 2011. He has also edited an anthology of poetry from the English county of Suffolk, By The North Sea, for publication in 2013. Away from poetry, he works as a freelance journalist, contributing mostly sports reports to British regional and national newspapers; he also exhibits and sells some of his photographs.