Anne Cluysenaar

Anne Cluysenaar was born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1936, the daughter of the Belgian-Scottish artist John Cluysenaar and his wife, the painter Sybil Fitzgerald Hewat. The family moved to Britain just before the outbreak of World War II. Cluysenaar studied French and English literature at Trinity College, Dublin before pursuing her career in academia, where she lectured in literature, linguistics and creative writing at universities including Manchester, Dublin, Aberdeen, Lancaster, Birmingham and Cardiff. Cluysenaar was committed to writing poetry from a young age, and believed that the Welsh landscape impacted her work. Her collections include A Fan of Shadows (1967), Nodes (1971),  Double Helix (1982) and Batu-Angas, Envisioning Nature with Alfred Russel Wallace (2008). Cluysenaar has also been widely published in magazines and anthologies, and founded and edited multiple literary journals and magazines, including Sheaf and Scintilla. In the later years of her life, Cluysenaar ran a smallholding in Monmouthshire. Cluysenaar passed away in 2014.