Books

Frank Freeman’s Dancing School (Salt Publishing, 2009)

“Cliff Yates is one of my favourite poets, writing in an idiom I’d like to call ‘Skelmersdale Mystic/Domestic’ if he was in a band that band would produce hit singles that would linger in your head for years and if he was a greengrocer his vegetables would always be startling shapes. There’s childhood here, and love, and a way of seeing the world with the wrappers off that is, ultimately, Yatesian” – IAN MCMILLAN.

“Cliff Yates’s poems are among the most exciting, challenging and unpredictable of any being written now or for donkey’s years” – PETER SANSOM

“A sort of martial art: it stands there looking slight and friendly but in reality it’s using the reader’s own strength against herself till she ends up flat on the mat not knowing what’s hit her” – JANET FISHER

“One of the most famous concerts on the [1968] tour was at the Sunday Club at Frank Freeman’s Dancing School in Kidderminster. [John Peel] describes what took place: ‘When I told them they said, ‘Wow, it’s a really groovy name.’ I said, ‘No, it’s not a groovy name, it’s a dancing school run by a bloke called Frank Freeman.’” – MIKE BARNES, Captain Beefheart.

Emergency Rations (poetry pamphlet; Smith/Doorstop, 2004)

“Philosophy runs smudged into daily life…he offers us the surprise born of unconstrained freedom….that combination of precision with the seemingly random that gives this shortcollection such expansive range” – BEN FELSENBURG, Incwriters

“Yates is an absolute master… he stretches and dares you to properly understand what you are reading. He makes you want to read and re-read his work.…. Technically stunning and always there are more questions than answers” – STEVE ANDERSON, New Hope International

“If you like poetry firmly rooted in the real world, the everyday, this is not the book for you. You will be seduced into thinking it is, because everyday situations seem to be what is being described, but you will soon find that prisms and mirrors, flashbacks and flash-forwards, parallel universes etc. come into play. You are never where you think you are, which for me is one of the purposes of poetry” – LYN MOIR, Sphinx Chapbook Review Magazine

Henry’s Clock (Smith/Doorstop, 1999), winner of both the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival first collection prize and the Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition

“Poets like Cliff Yates only come along every so often, like eclipses or rare migrating birds, and, like an eclipse or a rare migrating bird, Cliff Yates should be gazed at, parked near, and written about. People often talk about poets being fresh, and they mean fresh like bread, likely to go stale. Cliff Yates is fresh like the very first crack of dawn is fresh: unique, unrepeatable, full of promise” – IAN MCMILLAN

Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School (Poetry Society 1999, 2004)

“Jumpstart is the best aid to the teaching of poetry since Sandy Brownjohn’s work of the 1980s” – GORDON WILSON in The Teacher.

“Jumpstart is a classic of its kind: inventive, inspiring and instructive” – ANDREW MOTION.

(ed) Oranges: Poems from Maharishi School, foreword by Andrew Motion (Maharishi School Press, 2001) a TES Book of the Week

“The poems in this book are of an astonishingly high standard…at least two of the poets here are distinctive enough to warrant books of their own. This is where the difference is made between these pieces and poems produced in hundreds of one-off workshops with poets…few teachers or pupils have the breadth of reading to know when a poem is made better by a particular adjustment, and the editing skills to know how to make those changes” –  SIÂN HUGHES in The Times Educational Supplement.

14 Ways of Listening to the Archers (poetry pamphlet; Smith/Doorstop 1994

POEMS ALSO IN THE FOLLOWING ANTHOLOGIES:

Not in So Many Words: Poems and Commentaries on Poems (Smith/Doorstop, 2005)
Plant Care: A Festschrift for Mimi Khalvati ed. E.A. Markham (Sheffield: Linda Lee Books, 2004)
Writers’ Awards 2003 (London: Arts Council England, 2003)
The Forward Book of Poetry 2001 (Forward Publishing, 2001)
Listening to the Birth of Crystals ed A. Taylor & A. Corkish (Paula Brown, 2003)
A Fresh Look and a Fresh Listen: National Poetry Day 2000 (Poetry Society, 2000)
Journeys: National Poetry Day 2001 (Poetry Society, 2001)
Draft # 2 (Albert Poets, 1995)
Fat City (Dog)
Spoils: The Poetry Business Anthology, 1991 (Smith/Doorstop, 1991)
Against the Grain ed. Ian McMillan (Thomas Nelson, 1989)

SHORT STORIES IN THE FOLLOWING ANTHOLOGIES:

Manchester Stories 5: Caesura, (supplement in City Life Magazine, April 2003)
Hyphen (Comma Press, 2003)

POEMS IN THE FOLLOWING MAGAZINES/E-ZINES/JOURNALS:

Dog (various editions)
Foolscap
Gists and Piths
Harry’s Hand
Iron (various editions)
Liar Republic
London Magazine (various editions)
NATE News
Neon Highway (various editions)
New Generation
Orbis
Outposts
Oxford Magazine
Peggy’s Blue Skylight (various editions)
Poetry News
Scratch (various editions)
Seam
Smith’s Knoll (various editions)
Smoke (various editions)
Stand
Stride Magazine (various editions)
Sunk Island Review
Tears in the Fence
The Echo Room
The North (various editions)
The Rialto (various editions)
The Slab
The Third Way
The Times Educational Supplement
The Wide Skirt (various editions)
Uncompromising Positions

POETICS

‘Flying: A Poetics’ in Troubles Swapped for Something Fresh: Manifestos and Non Manifestos, ed. Rupert Loydell (Salt, 2009)

BROADCAST

BBC Radio 4 The Learning Curve (12th October, 1999)
BBC World Service series Working Out the Words (for which I acted as consultant; Spring 2001)

ARTICLES

English in Education
Writing in Education
Arvon Journal
Secondary English Magazine
Times Educational Supplement (various editions including Poems for Refugees feature, May-July 2002 & guest poet for TES Young Poet, autumn term 1999)
Launch into Poetry: Lesson Plans for Secondary School Members (Poetry Society)
Poetryclass website
Primary English Magazine
Speech and Drama
Poetry News (The Poetry Society)