Part of Series
Funded by Arts Council England, Faber New Poets aims to identify and support emerging talents at an early stage in their careers. Through a programme of mentorship, bursary and pamphlet publication, the scheme offers four poets a year the time, guidance and encouragement they require to help in the development of their work in the longer term. Zaffar Kunial was born in Birmingham and currently lives in Cumbria where he has just become the 2014 Wordsworth Trust Poet in Residence. His poem Hill Speak was placed third in the 2011 National Poetry Competition. In 2012 he won a Northern Writers' Award of £5000. A graduate of the LSE, for the last five years Zaffar has worked as a full-time 'Creative Writer' for Hallmark cards in West Yorkshire. Hill Speak is his only published poem.
Author
Zaffar Kunial's 'Us' (Faber & Faber, 2018) was shortlisted for a number of awards including the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award. 'Kunial’s gift is to examine language in a clinically precise manner to measure belonging, distance and love.' (John Glenday) ' With an impressive clutch of techniques, Kunial is a fine teller of stories.' (Alison Brackenbury, PN Review) Reviews for 'Us': 'Rich in form and reverent references, Us transports the reader from the hills of Pakistan to the schoolgrounds of Stratford-upon-Avon, from George Herbert to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.' (Maria Crawford, Financial Times, BOOKS OF THE YEAR) 'His first full book, which has come together slowly, patiently, over several years... He can do clear-eyed and tender inside a single poem, without any hint of glibness. Fun fact: he used to earn his living writing verse for Hallmark cards.' (The 20 best poetry books of 2018, The Spinoff, New Zealand) 'Zaffar Kunial possesses that rare quality of negative capability which Keats first identified in Shakespeare (a guiding spirit in this, Kunial’s first collection); the poems hold us among mysteries and doubts, without pronouncing or attempting to resolve. Their beauty lies in their indecisiveness – their quiet refusal to settle matters or hold to a single view.' (Rebecca Watts, Times Literary Supplement) 'Highlights of the year include the Heaney-esque lyricism of British-Indian poet Zaffar Kunial's accomplished debut Us.' (Tristram Fane Saunders, Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year) Reviews for 'Six': 'Kunial’s style is a wise vernacular that Auden would have loved . . . Six is a pamphlet to read and re-read; its words are so plain and so well put together that you won’t realise until much later how permanently they’ve marked you, like a grass stain.' (Alex Hayden-Williams, Varsity) 'Zaffar Kunial, King for a Summer of The Oval, the country’s best pace bowler of the human heart.' (John Andrews, Caught By The River)
