{{short description|British poet}} {{other people|Mark Ford}} {{Multiple issues| {{BLP sources|date=April 2023}} {{Autobiography|date=April 2023}} }} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox academic | honorific_prefix = <!-- see MOS:HONOURIFIC --> | name = Mark Ford | honorific_suffix = | image = Mark Ford.jpg | image_size = | alt = | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | birth_name = <!-- use only if different from full/othernames --> | birth_date = <!-- {{birth date and age|YYYY|MM|DD}} --> 1962 | birth_place = Nairobi, British Kenya | death_date = <!-- {{death date and age|YYYY|MM|DD|YYYY|MM|DD}} (death date then birth date) --> | death_place = | death_cause = | region = | other_names = | occupation = Poet, academic, literary critic | period = | known_for = | title = | boards = <!--board or similar positions extraneous to main occupation--> | spouse = | children = | awards = <!--notable national level awards only--> | website = | education = University of Oxford<br />Harvard University | alma_mater = <!--will often consist of the linked name of the last-attended higher education institution--> University of Oxford (BA, DPhil) | thesis_title = | thesis_url = | thesis_year = | school_tradition = | doctoral_advisor = | academic_advisors = | influences = <!--must be referenced from a third party source--> | era = | discipline = <!--major academic discipline – e.g. Physicist, Sociologist, New Testament scholar, Ancient Near Eastern Linguist--> | sub_discipline = <!--academic discipline specialist area – e.g. Sub-atomic research, 20th Century Danish specialist, Pauline research, Arcadian and Ugaritic specialist--> | workplaces = <!--full-time positions only, not student positions--> University College London<br />University of Kyoto | doctoral_students = <!--only those with WP articles--> | notable_students = <!--only those with WP articles--> | main_interests = | notable_works = | notable_ideas = | influenced = <!--must be referenced from a third party source--> | signature = | signature_alt = | signature_size = | footnotes = }} '''Mark Ford''' (born 1962) is a British poet. He is currently Professor of English in the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London.

==Life== Mark Ford was born in Nairobi, British Kenya, on 24 June 1962 to Donald and Mary Ford. His father worked for the airlines BOAC, then British Airways. As a result, he had a peripatetic childhood, moving 'to a new country roughly every 18 months', accompanied by a 'sense of rootlessness or of not belonging'.<ref>{{Cite web |title="creativity is an ongoing battle with language"- a Q & A with Mark Ford – The Poetry Society |url=https://poetrysociety.org.uk/news/creativity-is-an-ongoing-battle-with-language-a-q-a-with-mark-ford/ |access-date=2023-04-15 |website=poetrysociety.org.uk}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title='Trial and Error' – interview by Declan Ryan {{!}} Prac Crit |date=31 October 2018 |url=http://www.praccrit.com/interviews/trial-and-error-interview-by-declan-ryan/ |access-date=2023-04-15 |language=en-US}}</ref>

After school in London, he attended Oxford University, graduating in 1983 with a First in English Literature. He then studied at Harvard University as a Kennedy Scholar, before returning to Oxford to study for his doctorate, writing his thesis on the poetry of John Ashbery, supervised by John Bayley. After a number of years working as a lecturer in Oxford and London, he then moved to Japan, where he was Visiting Lecturer at Kyoto University between 1991-3.

Following this appointment, he worked as a freelance writer, principally reviewing poetry for ''The Guardian.''

He is a regular contributor to ''The'' ''New York Review of Books'',<ref>{{Cite web |title=Mark Ford |url=http://www.nybooks.com/authors/9737}}</ref> ''Times Literary Supplement'',<ref>{{Cite web |title=Mark Ford Archives |url=https://www.the-tls.co.uk/authors/mark-ford/ |access-date=2023-04-16 |website=TLS |language=en-GB}}</ref> and the ''London Review of Books''.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Mark Ford · LRB |url=http://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/mark-ford}}</ref>

==Bibliography==

===Poetry=== * ''Landlocked'' (Chatto & Windus, 1992; 1998) * ''Soft Sift'' (Faber & Faber, 2001; Harcourt Brace, 2003) * ''Six Children'' (Faber & Faber, 2011) * ''Selected Poems'' (Coffee House Press, 2014) * ''Enter, Fleeing'' (Faber & Faber, 2018) * ''The Morlocks: A Fantasia'' (New Walk, 2025)

===Prose=== * ''Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams'' (Faber & Faber, 2000; Cornell University Press, 2001) * ''A Driftwood Altar'': ''Essays and Reviews'' (Waywiser Press, 2006) * ''Mr and Mrs Stevens and Other Essays'' (Peter Lang, 2011) * ''This Dialogue of One: Essays on Poets from John Donne to Joan Murray'' (Eyewear Press, 2014) * ''Thomas Hardy: Half a Londoner'' (Harvard University Press, 2016) * ''Woman Much Missed: Thomas Hardy, Emma Hardy, and Poetry'' (Oxford University Press, forthcoming July 2023)<ref>{{Cite web |last=UCL |date=2018-04-30 |title=Professor Mark Ford |url=https://www.ucl.ac.uk/english/people/mark-ford |access-date=2023-04-16 |website=UCL English |language=en}}</ref> * ''A Guest Among Stars: Essays on Twentieth-Century Poets'' (Black Spring, 2024)

===Translation=== * ''New Impressions of Africa'' (Princeton University Press, 2011) * ''A Monkey at the Window'' by Al-Saddiq Al-Raddi, parallel text, co-translated with Sarah Maguire (Bloodaxe Books, 2016) * ''The Alley of Fireflies and Other Stories'' by Raymond Roussel, with an introduction and notes (The Song Cave, 2019) * ''Jules Laforgue: Selected Poems'' (The Song Cave, forthcoming November 2023)

=== Editions and anthologies === * ''No Name'' by Wilkie Collins edited with an introduction, notes and bibliography (Penguin Classics, 1994) * ''Nicholas Nickleby'' by Charles Dickens edited with an introduction, notes and bibliography (Penguin Classics, 1999) * ''‘Why I Am Not a Painter’ and other poems'' by Frank O’Hara, with an introduction and bibliography (Carcanet, 2003) * ''Something We Have That They Don’t: British & American Poetic Relations Since 1925'', with an introduction and bibliography, co-edited with Steve Clark (University of Iowa Press, 2004) * ''The New York Poets: An Anthology'', with an introduction and bibliography (Carcanet, 2004) * ''The New York Poets II: An Anthology'', co-edited with Trevor Winkfield, with an introduction and bibliography (Carcanet, 2006) * ''Frank O’Hara: Selected Poems'', with an introduction and bibliography (Knopf, 2008) * ''Allen Ginsberg: Poems Selected by Mark Ford'', with an introduction (Faber & Faber, 2008) * ''John Ashbery: Collected Poems Volume 1, 1956-1987'' with chronology and notes (Library of America, 2008; Carcanet, 2010) * ''Mick Imlah: Selected Poems'' (Faber & Faber, 2010) * ''London: A History in Verse'' with an introduction (Harvard University Press, 2012 (paperback, 2015)) * ''The Best British Poetry 2014'' with an introduction (Salt, 2014, 192pp.) * ''John Ashbery: Collected Poems Volume 2, 1988-2000'' with chronology and notes (Library of America, 2017; Carcanet, 2018)

===Miscellaneous === * ''John Ashbery in Conversation with Mark Ford'' (Between the Lines, 2003) * ''[https://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=10105 And So It Goes: Letters from Young Mr Grace (aka John Ashbery)]'' (''PN Review'', Vol. 44, no. 3, 2018, pp.&nbsp;45–51)

=== Articles and essays ===

* ‘John Ashbery and Raymond Roussel’ in ''Verse'' (Vol. 3 no. 3, 1986, pp.&nbsp;1–21). * ‘Non Persona: The Diversity of John Ashbery’ in ''Scripsi'' (Vol. 8, no. 3, 1993, pp.&nbsp;225–233). * ‘Wanting to Go to Bed With Frank O'Hara’ in ''Scripsi'' (Vol. 9, no. 2, 1993''',''' pp.&nbsp;141–150). * ‘A New Kind of Emptiness’ (on John Ashbery) in ''P.N. Review'' (Vol. 21, no.1, 1994, pp.&nbsp;48–50). * ‘Genius in its Pure State: The Literary Manuscripts of Raymond Roussel’ in ''The London Review of Books'' (Vol. 19, no. 10, 1997, pp.&nbsp;19–21). * ‘Inventions of Solitude: Thoreau and Auster’ in ''Journal of American Studies'' (Vol. 32, 1998, pp.&nbsp;201–219). * ‘A Wide and Wingless Path to the Impossible: The Poetry of F.T. Prince’ in ''P.N. Review'' (Vol. 29, no. 1, 2002, pp.&nbsp;31–33). * ‘Like a Lilly Daché Hat’ (on James Schuyler) in ''Poetry Review'' (Vol. 92. no. 3, 2002, pp.&nbsp;55–62). * ‘Elizabeth Bishop at the Water’s Edge’ in ''Essays in Criticism'' (Vol. 8, no. 3, July 2003, pp.&nbsp;235–261). * ‘Thomas Lovell Beddoes: ''Death’s Jest-Book''’ in ''Poetry Review'' (Vol. 93, no. 4, 2004, pp.&nbsp;52–61). * ‘Elizabeth Bishop’s Aviary’ in the ''London Review of Books'' (Vol. 29, no. 23, 2007, pp.&nbsp;20–22). * ‘Uncollected, Unpublished, Unfinished’ (on the manuscripts of Mick Imlah) in ''Oxford Poetry'' (Vol. 13, no. 2, 2010, pp.&nbsp;49–56). * ‘Joan Murray and the Bats of Wisdom’ in ''Poetry'' (Vol. 203, no. 5, 2014, pp.&nbsp;473–488). * ‘Entropy with Doxology’ (on A.R. Ammons) in ''Poetry'' (Vol. 213, No. 4, 2019, pp.&nbsp;390–402). * ‘She Opened the Door: Thomas Hardy, Emma Hardy, and Poetry’ in ''Essays in Criticism'' (Vol. 70, No. 2, 2020, pp.&nbsp;139–159, (F.W. Bateson Memorial Lecture)).

==References== {{reflist}}

==External links== *[http://wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/poeboes-podcastmark-ford-on-translation/ Podcast Interview with Ford by André Naffis-Sahely] *[https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mark-ford Poetry Foundation Entry]

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ford, Mark}} Category:1962 births Category:20th-century British poets Category:Writers from Nairobi Category:Kenyan poets Category:Kenyan male writers Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Academic staff of Kyoto University Category:Living people Category:British male poets Category:21st-century British poets Category:21st-century British male writers Category:20th-century British male writers Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford