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 Geraldine Monk builds atmospheric narratives gleaned from the coincidences of circumstance and the emotional geography of place. Monk wants the physicality of words to hook around the lurking ghosts and drag them from their petrified corners.
Geraldine Monk was born in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1952. Since the late 1970 s her poetry has been published in many anthologies most recently appearing in the Anthology of 20th Century British and Irish Poetry (ed Keith Tuma, American Oxford).
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Recent Publications
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Interregnum (Creation Books 1994)
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Dream Drover (Gratton Street Irregulars 1999)
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Noctivagations (West House Books 2001)
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Insubstantial Thoughts on the Transubstantiation of the Text (supplement to The Paper 2002)
Angel High Wires with Martin Archer (La Cooka Ratcha, C.D. 2001) |
What Others Say
Geraldine Monk is both a comic and a ferocious writer.she writes with a sense of fury that is almost drowned out by laughter.
—Tim Allen
wild, erotic and deeply strange writing. A poetry that reveals the unspeakable weirdness of the everyday.
—Sean Bonney
I am continuously awed by Monk’s opening out of experiential spaces both in terms of drama and close feeling, the way she catches the small words we offer in the face of immensities.
—David Annwn
 Geraldine Monk’s poems have been anthologised in every major survey of the British non-mainstream, from the Paladin ‘The New British Poetry’ in the 80’s to Sinclair’s ‘Conductors of Chaos’ in the 90’s and more recently in the two collections of Brit rebellion that had to cross the water to be published, Caddel and Quartermain’s ‘Other’ and Keith Tuma’s wonderful dry but cheeky tome – a serious overview of British poetry that includes Miss Monk while omitting Mr Motion deserves a great big kiss. 
Geraldine Monk’s poems have been anthologised in every major survey of the British non-mainstream, from the Paladin ‘The New British Poetry’ in the 80’s to Sinclair’s ‘Conductors of Chaos’ in the 90’s and more recently in the two collections of Brit rebellion that had to cross the water to be published, Caddel and Quartermain’s ‘Other’ and Keith Tuma’s wonderful dry but cheeky tome – a serious overview of British poetry that includes Miss Monk while omitting Mr Motion deserves a great big kiss. In other words her ‘alternative’ pedigree is well established, but unfortunately, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere, such a reputation ensures that such a poet will forever struggle, at least in life, (and I’m sure Geraldine will have a giggle over that) to achieve serious recognition from the centre. In this situation the very strength and excellence of the material becomes the actual barrier to recognition, and when this strength is characterised by an overt ‘mark’ of difference the possibility of breaking out of the vicious circle becomes even more remote. So let’s spread the word on this book and not shilly-shally over it. Noctivagations is ‘hot’ poetry, a poetry that is as deep as it is real, a poetry that is astonishing not because an ad-man spiel tells us it is but because from the off this has been written by someone who was having none of that garbage, written by someone who directed her ambition into the poetry.
—Tim Allen
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