John Lucas (poet)

John Lucas was a British poet, critic, biographer, anthologist and literary historian. He ran a poetry publisher called Shoestring Press, and he was the author of 92 Acharnon Street, which won the Dolman Best Travel Book Award in 2008.

Life and career

Lucas was born in Exeter, Devon, England, on 26 June 1937. He taught English at universities throughout the world, and was Professor Emeritus at the Universities of Loughborough and Nottingham Trent. Lucas wrote and translated over 40 books, including critical studies of Dickens, John Clare, and Arnold Bennett, books on English poetry, an anthology of the works of Nancy Cunard, as well as a life of his maternal grandfather, which combines biography with social history. In 2010, Lucas published Next Year Will Be Better: A Memoir of England in the 1950s. From 2011, Lucas also wrote several novels, including Waterdrops.
His collections of poetry include Studying Grosz on the Bus, winner of the Aldeburgh Festival Poetry Prize, A World Perhaps: New & Selected Poems, Flute Music and Things to Say. He also edited an anthology, The Isles of Greece, for Eland. For over ten years he was poetry reviewer for the New Statesman. His most recent books include A World Perhaps: New and Selected Poems, The Radical Twenties: Writing, Politics, Culture, and The Good That We Do.
Lucas played jazz cornet and trumpet with the Nottingham-based Burgundy Street Jazzmen. In 1994, he founded Shoestring Press.
Lucas died in September 2025, at the age of 88.