The Writers of Wales Database

SINCLAIR, IAIN

Iain was born in Cardiff in 1943, the son of a Welsh GP. He studied at the London College of Film Technique, the Courtauld Institute of Art and Trinity College Dublin before moving to London with his wife. His early work was self-published, and he was employed as a teacher and labourer whilst researching occult aspects of the city’s past.

A poet, filmmaker, fiction-writer, documentary script-writer and essayist, much of his work centres on London, most recently within the influences of psychogeography. He has edited Icarus and the Paladin Poetry Series, and has run his own small publisher; Albion Village Press. His novel Downriver (Grafton, 1991) won the 1992 Encore Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Iain was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2009. He now lives in Hackney, East London and has three children. Iain is a Fellow of The Welsh Academy.

The photograph of Iain above is © Marc Atkins.

Selected Publications:
Muscat’s Wurm (Albion Village Press, 1972)
Birth Rug (Albion Village Press, 1973)
Lud Heat (Albion Village Press, 1975)
Suicide Bridge (Albion Village Press, 1979)
White Chappell Scarlet Tracings (Goldmark, 1987)
Significant Wreckage: A Poem (Words Press, 1988)
Flesh Eggs and Scalp Metal (Paladin, 1989) 
Downriver (Grafton, 1991)
Radon Daughters (Jonathan Cape, 1994)
Lights Out For the Territory (Jonathan Cape, 1996)
Slow Chocolate Autopsy (Gollancz, 1997)
Liquid City (Reaktion Books, 1999)
Landor’s Tower (Granta Books, 2001)
Saddling the Rabbit (Etruscan Books, 2002)
London Orbital (Granta Books, 2002)
White Goods (Goldmark, 2002)
Dining on Stones (Hamish Hamilton, 2004)
Edge of the Orison: In the Traces of John Clare’s ’Journey Out Of Essex’ (Hamish Hamilton, 2005)
The Firewall: Selected Poems 1979-2006 (Etruscan Books, 2006)
Hackney: That Rose-Red Empire (Penguin, 2009)
Postcards from the 7th Floor (Pighog Press, 2010)
Ghost Milk: Calling Time on the Grand Project (Hamish Hamilton, 2011)

Contributed to:
Conductors of Chaos (editor) (Picador, 1996)
Rodinsky’s Room (co-writer) (Granta, 1999)
London: City of Disappearance (editor) (Hamish Hamilton, 2006)
Nyr Skaldskapur (co-writer) (Knives Forks and Spoons Press, 2010)