Gjertrud Schnackenberg recommended by Clive James
Author, critic and broadcaster Clive James was interviewed by Mary Beard for a special edition of Front Row Late, first broadcast on on BBC Two on Friday 21 December 2018. The programme was repeated on 27 November 2019 on BBC Two following the announcement of his death, and again on 4 January 2020 as part of a Clive James tribute night. Since being rebroadcast on BBC Four in February 2023, the programme has been made available permanently on BBC iPlayer.
During the course of the interview, Clive warmly recommended the poetry of the American poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg.
'I've just discovered a wonderful American poet called Gjertrud Schnackenberg - she really is called that - and I wish I had the time to catch up with everything she's done. I think she's brilliant.' - Clive James, speaking on BBC Two's Front Row Late: When Mary Beard met Clive James, December 2018
Click here to watch this wonderful final television interview with Clive James. He spoke about Gjertrud Schnackenberg at 14.15.
Clive James also chose Supernatural Love as one of his books of the year in the TLS in November 2018.
‘Is there another woman poet so good at the historical stuff [as U A Fanthorpe]? There is, and her name is Gjertrud Schnackenberg, whose Bloodaxe collection Supernatural Love (Poems 1976–2000) teems with thought-packed things, and thing-packed thoughts, that even Fanthorpe would have had to bless for their richness.’ – Clive James, Times Literary Supplement (Books of the Year, 2018)
Bloodaxe has published two titles by the American poet Gjertrud Schnackenberg. Her retrospective Supernatural Love: Poems 1976-2000 was published in 2001, followed by Heavenly Questions, winner of the Griffin International Poetry Prize, in 2011.
[21 January 2019]
