David Constantine

For the filmmaker, see David Constantin.

David John Constantine (born 1944) is an English poet,^[1] short story writer, novelist, and translator.^[2]

David Constantine at Durham Book Festival in 2015

Life and career

Born in Salford, Constantine read Modern Languages at Wadham College, Oxford, and was a Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford, until 2000, when he became a Supernumerary Fellow.^[3] He lectured in German at Durham University from 1969 to 1981 and at Oxford University from 1981 to 2000.^[4]

He was the co-editor of the literary journal Modern Poetry in Translation. Along with the Irish poet Bernard O'Donoghue, he is commissioning editor of the Oxford Poets imprint of Carcanet Press and has been a chief judge for the T. S. Eliot Prize.^[5]

His collections of poetry include Madder, Watching for Dolphins, Caspar Hauser, The Pelt of Wasps, Something for the Ghosts, Collected Poems and Nine Fathom Deep. He was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2020.^[6][7]

He is a translator of Hölderlin, Brecht, Goethe, Kleist, Michaux and Jaccottet. In 2024 he published A Bird Called Elaeus, his translation and arrangement of poems from the Greek Anthology.^[8] He won the Popescu Prize for translation in 2003^[9] and was shortlisted in 2015.^[10]

Constantine has published seven collections of short stories. In 2013, his collection Tea at the Midland and Other Stories won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, making Constantine the first English writer to win this award.^[11] The title story from this collection won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2010.^[12] His other collections of short stories include Under the Dam (2005),^[13] The Shieling (2009),^[14] which was shortlisted for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award,^[15] and The Dressing-Up Box and Other Stories (2019).^[16]

In 2015, the film 45 Years, based on Constantine's short story "In Another Country", was released. The film stars Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling. The film won the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival^[17] and Best British/Irish Film at the London Film Critics' Circle awards.^[18] Rampling was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance.^[19]

Constantine is also author of two novels, Davies and The Life-Writer, and a biography, Fields of Fire: A Life of Sir William Hamilton.

Awards and honours

• 2002 Whitbread Poetry Prize, shortlist, Watching for Dolphins
• 2003 Popescu Prize, translation of Hans Magnus Enzensberger's Lighter than Air
• 2007 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature^[20]
• 2010 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, shortlist, The Shieling
• 2010 BBC National Short Story Award, "Tea at the Midland"
• 2013 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, Tea at the Midland and Other Stories^[21]
• 2020 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry^[22]

Bibliography

Poetry

• A Brightness to Cast Shadows (1980), Bloodaxe Books, ISBN 9780906427156
• Watching for Dolphins (1983)
• Selected Poems (1991)
• Caspar Hauser (1994)
• The Pelt of Wasps (1998)
• Something for the Ghosts (2002)
• Nine Fathoms Deep (2009)
• Elder(2014)
• Belongings (2020)

Short stories

• Back at the Spike (1994)
• Under the Dam (2005)
• The Shieling (2009)
• Tea at the Midland and Other Stories (2012)
• In Another Country: Selected Stories (2015)
• The Dressing-Up Box and Other Stories (2019)
• Rivers of the Unspoilt World (2022)

Novels

• Davies (1985)
• The Life-Writer (2015)

Criticism

• Early Greek Travellers and the Hellenic Ideal (1984)
• Poetry: The Literary Agenda (2013)

Translations

• Bertolt Brecht: The Antigone of Sophocles
• The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht (translated with Tom Kuhn)
• Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Lighter than Air
• Hans Magnus Enzensberger: New Selected Poems
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust, Part 1
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Faust, Part 2
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Elective Affinities
• Friedrich Hölderlin: Sophocles: Oedipus and Antigone
• Friedrich Hölderlin: Selected Poems
• Philippe Jaccottet: Under Clouded Skies & Beauregard (translated with Mark Treharne)
• Heinrich von Kleist: Selected Writings
• Henri Michaux: Spaced, Displaced (translated with Helen Constantine)
• A Bird Called Elaeus: poems for here and now from The Greek Anthology

Reviews

• Hearn, Sheila G. (1981), review of A Brightness to Cast Shadows, in Murray, Glen (ed.), Cencrastus No. 5, Summer 1981, pp. 51