Michael Laskey

Michael George Laskey (born 15 August 1944) is an English poet and editor. Life Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire. Laskey was educated at Gresham's School and St John's College, Cambridge, where he read English. After Cambridge, Laskey worked for ten years as a teacher in secondary schools and further education in Spain and England. Laskey has published four poetry collections, including New & Selected Poems (2008), and three pamphlets. In 1989, Laskey founded the international Aldeburgh Poetry Festival and served as its director for ten years. He subsequently became chairman of The Poetry Trust (the organisation that runs the Festival), 2003–2008. In 1991, with Roy Blackman he founded the poetry magazine Smiths Knoll, and since 2002 has edited it (with Joanna Cutts). In 2005 he was awarded an Arts Council International Writing Fellowship at the Banff Centre in Canada.