Photo by Marc Atkins

Douglas Oliver has published 12 books of poetry, fiction, and criticism; his forthcoming volumes will feature a Penguin Modern Poets volume (with Iain Sinclair and Denise Riley) and a Selected Poems, Talisman House, U.S.A. Writing in The Guardian, Howard Brenton said his recent New York poemsatire, Penniless Politics (Bloodaxe, 1994, Hoarse Commerce, 1992), "sets the poetic agenda for the next 20 years", while Ed Dorn called his companion British poem, The Infant and the Pearl, "the long-awaited post-medieval retake of the dream of a better way." The Scarlet Cabinet (Scarlet Editions, New York 1992) was a compendium of seven books by Alice Notley or himself, his selected fiction and poetry are in Three Variations on the Theme of Harm (Paladin, 1990), and he has an earlier collected poems, Kind (Allardyce, Barnett, 1987). Working as journalist, freelance writer, secretary, and university lecturer, he has moved between Europe and the States, and now lives in Paris with the poet Alice Notley.  He is currently working on two new books, one a prose-poetry work on Africa, the other a Paris sequence. Well known as a poetry performer, he is also author of a treatise on prosody and narrative.