Staff Profile

Tamar Yoseloff was born in the US and attended Sarah Lawrence College, where she studied with Thomas Lux and Grace Paley, among others. She moved to the UK in 1987, and since then has been active on the London poetry scene, running the Terrible Beauty reading series at the Troubadour Coffee House, acting as Reviews Editor for Poetry London, and working as Programme Coordinator for the Poetry School, where she is currently a core tutor and a lecturer on the Poetry School / Newcastle University MA in Writing Poetry.

She has published six full collections; her debut book, Sweetheart, won the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize and was a PBS Commendation. Her most recent collection is The Black Place (Seren, 2019). She is also the author of Formerly (the inaugural chapbook from her publishing venture, Hercules Editions), incorporating photographs by Vici MacDonald and shortlisted for the 2012 Ted Hughes Award; two collaborative editions with the artist Linda Karshan (Marks, published by Pratt Original Editions in 2007 and Desire Paths, published in an edition of 10 by Galerie Hein Elferink in 2012) and Nowheres, a privately-produced book with the artist Charlotte Harker in 2015. Both Formerly and Nowheres were featured in exhibitions at the Poetry Café, and Formerly was also the basis for an exhibition at the National Poetry Library in the Southbank Centre.

She has edited A Room to Live In: A Kettle’s Yard Anthology (Salt, 2007) and Lookout: Poetry from Aldeburgh Beach (Lookout Editions, 2017). She was also the Poetry Editor of Art World magazine from 2007 to 2009.

She received an MPhil in Writing from the University of Glamorgan in 2003 and a PhD in Creative Writing from Aberystwyth University in 2010. Her main research interests are in poetry and the visual arts, and urban psychogeography.

She has run site-specific writing courses for galleries including the Hayward, the Barbican, the Royal Academy, the National Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Kettle’s Yard, MiMA, Somerset House and Tate Liverpool. She has taught for a number of London-based writing organisations including Spread the Word, Birkbeck and the Poetry School.