Matthew Welton

Biography
Matthew Welton was born in Nottingham in 1969 and lives in Manchester. He received the Jerwood-Aldeburgh First Collection Prize for The Book of Matthew (Carcanet, 2003), which was a Guardian Book of the Year. He was a Hawthornden Fellow in 2004. Matthew collaborates regularly with the composer Larry Goves, with whom he was awarded a Jerwood Opera Writing Fellowship in 2008. He lectures in creative writing at the University of Bolton.

THE BOOK OF MATTHEW (CARCANET)

 * The Guardian -- Although its insights come through a slowly savoured sensuality rather than through the impact of intense excitement, it still believes that repetition and variation are at the heart of the lyric.

WE NEEDED COFFEE BUT... (CARCANET)

 * Dr Fulminare's Queftionable Arts -- There's something of a magic eye effect to poring over the patterns of words - stare (or rather, mull) for long enough and a new shape starts to emerge.
 * Hand + Star -- Welton’s at his best in shorter forms, or sequences of shorter poems. The longer pieces, however, were a little hit and miss. 
 * The Other Room -- the malleable system allows Welton again to create a mood which creeps under the surface almost unnoticed: again a fuzziness between realism and plasticity.