Poet, editor, visual artist, and translator James Byrne was born in Buckinghamshire in 1977. He earned his MFA from New York University, where he received a Stein Fellowship. He also holds an undergraduate degree from North London University and a Ph.D. in creative writing from Edge Hill University.
Byrne’s poetry collections include The Overmind (Broken Sleep Books, 2024), Places You Leave (Arc Publications, 2022), Of Breaking Glass (Broken Sleep, 2022) The Caprices (Arc, 2019), Everything Broken Up Dances (Tupelo Press, 2015), White Coins (Arc, 2015), Blood/Sugar (Arc, 2009), and Passages of Time (flipped eye publishing, 2005). He is also the author of the pamphlets WITHDRAWALS (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2019), Soapboxes (KFS, 2014), and Myths of the Savage Tribe (Oystercatcher, 2014; co-written with Sandeep Parmar). His latest collection, Nightsongs for Gaia, is out now with Arc.
Byrne co-founded The Wolf magazine, serving as editor from 2002 to 2017 and as sole editor from 2006 onwards. Known for his commitment to international poetry, Byrne has co-edited Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (Bloodaxe Books, 2009); Atlantic Drift: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics (Edge Hill University Press/Arc, 2017); I am a Rohingya, the first collection of Rohingya refugee poems published in English; and Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets (Northern Illinois University Press/Arc, 2012), the first anthology of contemporary Burmese poetry available in the West. Byrne also co-translated Bones Will Crow and Rohingya poet Ro Mehrooz’s Poems Written Through Barbed-Wire Fences (Arc, 2024). His co-translation of Libyan poet Ashur Etwebi was included in Deep Vellum Press’s Best Literary Translations 2024. He also edited the anthology The Wolf: A Decade (Poems 2002–2012).
Endorsed by The Times as one of the “ten rising stars of British poetry” in 2009, Byrne has more recently been the recipient of a Cholmondeley Award and a Travelling Scholarship from the Society of Authors. His work has been translated into languages including Arabic, Burmese, Chinese, French, Serbian, Slovenian, and Spanish. He has performed his work in Syria, Burma, and Libya at the invitation of the British Council.
Byrne is the international editor for Arc Publications. He was the poet in residence at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, from 2011 to 2012, and was previously a senior lecturer at Edge Hill University, teaching poetry and poetics. He is currently a senior lecturer on modern and contemporary poetry at Cornell University.
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More James Byrne
Text: Read three poems by Byrne at Granta
Video: Byrne reads with Forrest Gander for the Grolier Poetry Book Shop
Audio/Text: Read and listen to poetry by Byrne at Poetry International
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Photo by Matthew Thompson.