About the Author

SUSAN UTTING was born in South London, moved twenty times in forty years, then settled, after a fashion, in Berkshire. Notions of home, identity and where she comes from frequently feature in her writing, and are again explored in this book, as are the shifting lives of other women, the Half the Human Race of the title.
Susan studied Creative Writing at Sussex University and English with film and drama at Reading University, where she subsequently taught for more than 17 years. Her awards include an Arts Council Laureateship, Poetry Business Pamphlet Prize, The Berkshire Poetry Prize, The Peterloo Prize and a writing fellowship at Reading’s School of English and American Literature. Her poems have been widely published, including in The Times, TLS, The Independent, Forward Book of Poetry, The Poetry Review and Poems on the Underground. Her work was selected by the London Poetry Library to be recorded for Poetry International at the South Bank Centre, where it was broadcast along with other international poets' work.
Half the Human Race follows and includes selections from three earlier collections: Striptease (Smith/Doorstop), Houses Without Walls (Two Rivers Press) and Fair’s Fair (also TRP).

Reviews

'Utting animates life's brittle edges and her poems carry unforced emotional weight.' Moniza Alvi; 'Beyond the attractions of their sensuous diction her finest poems accomplish a strikingly steady focus, both compassionate and uncompromising.' Elizabeth Garrett