Born in Liverpool, Grevel Lindop has lived in Manchester for more than thirty years. Formerly an academic, he now works as a freelance poet, biographer, critic and essayist. His six books of poems include Tourists (1987), A Prismatic Toy (1991) and Selected Poems (2000), all from Carcanet. A new collection, Playing With Fire, is published by Carcanet in January 2006. His prose books include A Literary Guide to the Lake District (Sigma Leisure, 2005). He teaches for The Poetry School in Manchester and regularly gives readings at leading venues throughout the country. He is currently working on a biography of the poet, novelist and occultist Charles Williams (1886-1945).

A Literary Guide to the Lake District : Recognised as a classic when it first appeared (Winner of ‘Lakeland Book of the Year’) this is a fully-revised and updated edition of Grevel Lindop’s guide to the Lake District and its literary associations. Invaluable for all with an interest in the writers, poets and novelists who have been inspired by the beauty of the area.

- ‘For those who know the area well, the book will be a treat. For those who have never set foot there, Lindop provides a book-lover’s feast.’ – Melvyn Bragg, The Sunday Times.

- ‘The book is a joy and will be my constant companion from now on – what more can one say?’ Angela Locke, Cumbria.

Tourists : A vivid collection of poems exploring landscape, love and travel, Tourists includes Lindop’s much-praised sequence ‘Vignettes: Poems for Twenty-One Wood Engravings by Thomas Bewick’ with the original illustrations.

- 'This poet's best gifts - care for detail, love of Nature, clear eye and formal excellence. Every poem shows us more than we have seen with our own eyes.' - Elizabeth Jennings, The Independent.

A Prismatic Toy : Explores the interplay of vision and voice – ways of seeing the world and ways of speaking it. Its voices range from a three-year-oild girl’s account of her day, to that of the poet Rilke as he turns painfully towards modernism; its visions range from a telescopic view of Liverpool cathedral to the archetypal worlds of myth and folktale.

- 'A lyric voice that handles images well, that distinguishes - as few poets do - the erotic from the sexual, that moves language in and out of metaphor with skill and grace…It reminds you of an ordered and structured world. It is somewhat the voice of a happy spirit, with, maybe, a measure of regret and an interesting intimation of waste.' - Eavan Boland, PN Review

Selected Poems : ‘Transparently accomplished,’ John Kerrigan said: Lindop’s poetry ‘displays the kind of internal ‘itinerary’ which in Mandelstam’s langaue is the mark of achieved poetry. This book brings together the best from thirty years of that itinierary, a journey through worlds exotic, domestic, surreal and spychic, explored with visual sharpness and linguistic acuity.

- ‘All the tricks in the poet's bag work for him as a master, so unobtrusively that it is only at the second or third reading that you become aware that the thought and feeling...are supported by an amazingly intricate web of sound.' – R.V. Bailey, The North.

Playing With Fire: This sparkling new collection (publication January 2006) celebrates subjects ranging from the art of Gauguin to the music of Fauré, and from a blood-drinking Tibetan deity to the lemons in Robert Graves’s garden, besides journeying into the realms of sexuality with a group of passionately erotic love lyrics and a sequence set in an East London strip club.

Website : www.grevel.co.uk