Roy Fisher (1930-2017) published over 30 poetry books, and was the subject of numerous critical essays and several studies, including The Thing About Roy Fisher: Critical Essays on the Poetry of Roy Fisher, edited by Peter Robinson and John Kerrigan (Liverpool University Press, 2000), and of The Unofficial Roy Fisher, edited by Peter Robinson (Shearsman Books, 2010).
He published four books with Bloodaxe. The Dow Low Drop: New & Selected Poems (1996) was superseded by his later retrospective, The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2005 (2005), and followed by Standard Midland (2010), published on his 80th birthday, which was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award. An expanded edition, The Long and the Short of It: Poems 1955-2010 – including Standard Midland – was published in 2012. His first US Selected Poems, edited by August Kleinzahler, was published by Flood Editions in 2011. His final collection, Slakki: New & Neglected Poems (2016) is a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Peter Robinson's edition, The Citizen and the Making of 'City' (Bloodaxe Books, 2022) includes Fisher's early, previously unpublished prose work 'The Citizen', the precursor of 'City', with all three versions of that later sequence.
Born in Handsworth, Birmingham, he retired as Senior Lecturer in American Studies from Keele University in 1982. He was also a jazz musician, and lived in the Derbyshire Peak District in his later years.
Author photo: Jemimah Kuhfeld
