Robert Minhinnick Biography

Welsh poet, born in Neath, Glamorgan, educated at University College, Cardiff. He worked as a postman, a clerk, a schoolteacher, and in other capacities before becoming involved in environmental education in 1984. He is also active as a writer-in-residence for schools and residential courses. His collections of poetry include A Thread in the Maze (1978), Native Ground (1979), Life Sentences (1983), The Dinosaur Park (1985), The Looters (1989), and Hey Fatman (1994). Minhinnick's poems display his strong concern with poetic craft; the sometimes constraining pentameters which tended to dominate his earlier work have been superseded by a more personally cadenced prosody. Much of his work is in a compassionately social-realist mode, which is most provoking and effective when combined with imaginative elements. The increasingly ambitious and flexible character of his poetry is evident in The Looters, which contains two substantial and challenging sequences, ‘The Hot House’ and ‘Fairground Music’. Watching the Fire Eater (1992) is a collection of essays.