Todd Swift

Swift was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada,[1] and raised in Saint-Lambert, Quebec. He received a B.A. in English from Concordia University (Montreal) and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of East Anglia. He became British on April 3, 2013, at Westminster Town Hall, Marylebone, London.

While attending university, Swift was an active parliamentary debater and ran the international cabaret Vox Hunt, which featured amongst others regular performances by Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright. As a young man, Swift was friends with rising literary stars including Misha Glouberman, Heather O'Neill and David McGimpsey. He was also half of the electronic music-poetry duo Swifty Lazarus, also featuring composer-trombonist Tom Walsh.

In the 1990s, Swift wrote hundreds of hours of television (mostly children's animation) for HBO, Paramount, Hanna-Barbera, Fox, Cinar and DIC Entertainment, and was story editor for many episodes of anime show Sailor Moon.[2] He also worked at General Media, Inc. (Penthouse) for several years as a writer and editor of erotica.

Swift is the author of nine full collections of poetry; his Selected Poems is from Marick Press, USA. He is also a prolific anthologist and editor. His poems have been widely translated and are included in respected journals such as Poetry, The Globe and Mail, Poetry London and The Guardian.

From 2004-2012 he was Oxfam Great Britain's Poet-in-residence, running their poetry series in London and editing books, a DVD and CDs. Swift has been a tutor with The Poetry School. He was Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Kingston University, England 2006–2013, having previously lectured at Budapest University (ELTE), London Met, and Birkbeck. He has taught at the University of Glasgow. He is a convert to Roman Catholicism. From 2005 Swift has run the literary blog Eyewear and since 2012 has been director and publisher of the indie press Eyewear Publishing, founded in 2012. From 2017–2018 he was Visiting Scholar/ Writer-in-residence for Pembroke College, Cambridge, England.

In July 2018, Swift was accused by the writers' union, the Society of Authors of imposing unfair contracts that forbade Eyewear Publishing authors from seeking help from the society. Swift stated that the contracts were negotiable and the particular clause could be removed if requested.[3] In May 2019 he stood for the post of Oxford University professor of poetry, a contest which was won by Alice Oswald.[4][5].

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