Michael Blackburn was born in Newton Aycliffe, Co. Durham. He attended Richmond School Yorkshire and gained an MA in English Literature at the University of Leeds. From 1976 to 1978 Blackburn was an editor on Poetry & Audience, the poetry magazine produced by The School of English at the University of Leeds. Together with the American poet, Michael Coffey, he edited a special translations issue. During the early-to-mid-1980s he was an editor on Stand Magazine, Newcastle Upon Tyne. In 1985 he founded the poetry press, Jackson's Arm, and in 1986 co-organised the readings at the Morden Tower in Newcastle with the poet Brendan Cleary, including the first Poetry Marathon in the northeast. In 1987 he set up a small literary magazine, Harry's Hand, which ran for four issues from London. In 1988 he became Lincolnshire'sfirst Literature Animateur, a post he held until 1993. During that period he also established Sunk Island Publishing, which issued Sunk Island Review, an irregular paperback of new poetry, fiction, reviews and translations plus occasional novels and other titles. In 1995 he was a Writer in Residence on the Internet, courtesy of Arts Council/Channel, based at Artimedia in Batley, Yorkshire and produced the hypertext project, The Last of Harry. In 1988 he became a Fellow of the RSA. He is also an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. From 2005–2008 he was the Royal Literary Fund fellow at the University of Lincoln. His private papers are in Special Collections at the University Library, Leeds. He writes the Currente Calamo column at .
Published Works
Poetry
The Constitution of Things Why Should Anyone Be Here And Singing? Backwards Into Bedlam The Lean Man Shaving The Prophecy Of Christos The Last Of Harry The Ascending Boy Portrait Of The Artist As A Cyborg Eskeleth And Apples Let's Build A City - The Vision of T Dan Smith Big On The Hawkesbury Pocket Venus Spyglass Over The Lagoon Albion Days After Richmond microliths/micropoems
Non-poetry publications
Organising Literary Events Sucks To Your Revolution Proust-Its: Annotations To Proust
Others
Men : poem text for artist’s book by Les Bicknell “Storm”: poem poster Atmospheric Chambers + Colourworld, Introduction to catalogue of exhibition of works by Geoffrey Mark Matthews and Colin Davis, Lincoln, 2018. After Richmond, Introduction, images and text for exhibition of works by Geoffrey Mark Matthews, Colin Davis and Michael Blackburn at the Sam Scorer Gallery, Lincoln, 2019
