Shadow – The Poetry Society: Poems

The Poetry Society, in association with the Royal Collection Trust, commissioned a new poem from Alice Oswald, to be inspired by the exhibition Painting Paradise: The Art of the Garden, showing at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London. The poem was premiered at an event held at the gallery on 25 June 2015 and this Filmpoem was made by De Facto films with Alice Oswald reading her work.

A limited edition print of the poem, produced by The Letter Press and signed by the poet, is available to buy from The Poetry Society website

Find out more about Painting Paradise and The Poetry Society's partnership with the Royal Collection Trust.

Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald was the inaugural winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry in 2009 for her collection Weeds and Wildflowers. She lives in Devon and is married with three children. Her book-length poem Dart, originally commissioned by The Poetry Society, won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2002. Her third collection, Woods etc., won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize 2006, and in 2009 she was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for A Sleepwalk on the Severn, a night-piece for several voices set on the Severn Estuary. Memorial (Faber, 2012) was the winner of The Poetry Society's Popescu Prize in 2013, and was also awarded the 2013 Warwick Prize for writing. Tithonus, featured on BBC Radio 4's The Echo Chamber, was shortlisted for the 2014 Ted Hughes Award. She has worked on several commissions for The Poetry Society, including for Painting Paradise and National Poetry Day. In 2017 her collection Falling Awake (Jonathan Cape, 2016) won the Costa Poetry Award.