Alison Brackenbury Biography

British poet, born in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, educated at St Hugh's College, Oxford. Dreams of Power (1981), her first substantial collection of verse, contained an impressive sequence in the voice of a woman at the court of Elizabeth I. Breaking Ground (1984), its long title poem structured around events in the life of John Clare, was followed by Christmas Roses (1988), which contained numerous lyric poems of remarkable refinement and concentration, and Selected Poems (1991). The emotional and imaginative sensitivity apparent in many of her poems is given substance and clarity by precisely observed natural and domestic imagery. In the title poem of 1829 (1995), Mozart's widow reflects upon her past.