David Harsent
2016 Booker Prize Judge
- Prizes judged
David Harsent is a poet and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Roehampton
Harsent has published many collections of poetry and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has received a number of literary awards, including the 2014 T.S. Eliot prize, the Eric Gregory Award, the Geoffrey Faber Award, the Cheltenham Festival Prize, two Arts Council Bursaries and a Society of Authors Travel Fellowship. Sprinting from the Graveyard, his English versions of poems written under siege in Sarajevo by the Bosnian poet Goran Simić, have been widely praised, and were incorporated by Nigel Osborne into his opera Sarajevo as well as forming the basis for radio and TV programmes.
He has collaborated with composers (most often with Harrison Birtwistle) on commissions from the Royal Opera House, the Proms, The Nash Ensemble, the Prussia Cove Festival, VARA (Holland), the Aldeburgh Festival, the Aix-enProvence Festival, BBC Radio and Channel 4 TV.