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Nancy Gaffield

Nancy Gaffield is a senior lecturer in creative writing at University of Kent and an award-winning poet. She was born and brought up in Illinois and Colorado in the United States. Before moving to Canterbury in 1990, Nancy lived in Japan and Egypt. Her collection Tokaido Road (CB editions, 2011) relates to the woodblock print series, “53 Stages of the Tokaido Road,” by the Japanese artist, Hiroshige. The collection was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and nominated for the Forward First Collection Prize and it won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. It has been described as “a fascinating fusion of Western and Eastern art by someone who is respectful of both.”  She is also the recipient of a Templar Poetry Pamphlet Award for Owhere (2012). She has performed at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (2012), the Derwent Poetry Festival (2012), the Ledbury Poetry Festival (2013) and Sounds New Contemporary Music and Poetry (2011, 2012, 2014). Her third collection, Continental Drift, was published by Shearsman in 2014. Nancy was commissioned by Okeanos Ensemble to write the libretto for Tokaido Road: A Journey after Hiroshige (Shearsman 2014) based on her poetry collection. The chamber opera, composed by Nicola LeFanu, premiered at the Cheltenham Music Festival in July 2014 before touring to other high-profile venues in 2014-15.