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David Hart (UK Poet)
David Hart (born February 7th 1940) is a British poet.

Life
He was born in Aberystwyth, Wales. His mother was from south Essex. His father, from Mile End, London, was a hospital laboratory technician sent at the beginning of the war to Aberystwyth to set up, with a doctor, a county public health service. Later he became Chief Technician of the hospital laboratory.

He was educated at Ardwyn Grammar School, Aberysywth (closed 1973), and, when the family moved to Essex, at King Edward VI, Chelmsford, then at Kings College London - studying Theology. During a year out, he hitch-hiked down through Europe to the Middle East, including on the way staying a short while at monasteries on Mount Athos. After further training at Wells Theological College he became curate of St Michael's Church, Highgate, London and was ordained priest in St Paul's Cathedral in 1968.

During that period he was one of the group that published the radical 'underground' magazine, The Catonsville Roadrunner and that 'occupied' the American church off Grosvenor Square, during the anti-Vietnam war rally there, 1968.

Towards the end of the 1960s he was one of the Chaplains to the Guild of Students, Saint Francis Hall, at Birmingham University during a time of sit-ins and demos and celebratory unrest in the university.

During the 1970s he worked in Birmingham outside of the priesthood, did some Further Education Drama teaching, began to publish poetry in off-beat magazines did some poetry public readings, had plays performed locally and won the Play for Wales/Theatr Powys competition - and for several years was a theatre critic for the Birmingham Post, writing as D.J.Hart.

From 1982-1997 he was Literature and Drama Officer for West Midlands Arts (now Arts Council Midlands), the regional arts board. From then to the present he has worked as a poet freelance in public activities and in developing his own writing.

Residencies

 * Poetry residency Worcester Cathedral
 * Poetry residency South Birmingham Mental Health
 * Poetry residency, Heartlands Hospital
 * Part-time poetry teaching posts, Warwick and Birmingham Universities
 * Shared poetry residency, Bronglais Hospital (Aberystwyth)
 * Poet in Residence, Aldeburgh. Poetry Festival
 * 2012-13 Library of Birmingham Poet, between the closing of the old and the opening of the new

Commissions & Collaborations
Commissions have included Royal Mail, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Sean Henry exhibition, B'ham Museum & Art Gallery (poems in response to Rouault's Miserere); Ikon Gallery opening, poems in response to paintings by Marilyn Johns exhibited with her paintings in Shropshire, Italy and Cambridge; Mappa Mundi libretto - Song of the mapmaker (music David Ventura) for Hereford Cathedral; Birmingham Poet Laureate 1997-98.

Created the Poetry Squantum at the Hay on Wye Festival. Co-operation ongoing with the composer Liz Johnson.

Awards
Prizes include a First, a Second and a runner-up in the Poetry Society's National Poetry Competition, and First in the Irish National competition.

He is an Elected Member of the Welsh Academy.

Works

 * Border Country (Woodwind, 1991, of the first Hay on Wye Poetry Squantum)
 * Setting the poem to words (Five Seasons Press 1998)
 * Poetry Listing (1990-93, Woodwind)
 * In the Men's Hut (Flarestack 2000, Worcester Cathedral poems)
 * Crag Inspector (a book-length poem of Bardsey Island, Five Seasons Press, 2002)
 * Work, the work, a poem of Beethoven (Flarestack, 2005)
 * Running Out (Five Seasons Press, 2006)
 * The Titanic Café closes its doors and hits the rocks… (Nine Arches, 2009, shortlisted for the Michael Marks Pamphlet Award)
 * Misky (Flarestack, 2011)