Jeremy Over was born in Leeds and has lived in London, Essex, Cumbria and, since moving to Llanidloes in 2016, Wales. He has been writing poetry for ever and was first published in Carcanet’s anthology ‘New Poetries II’ in 1999. He has since published four collections with the same publisher: ‘A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese’ (2001), ‘Deceiving Wild Creatures’ (2009), ‘Fur Coats in Tahiti’ (2019) and ‘Fourth & Walnut’ (2025). The last two were both shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year. He was BBC Wildlife Poet of the Year in 2001 and has had poetry and essays/reviews published in various magazines and anthologies such as ‘Poetry Review’, ‘PN Review’, ‘The Penguin Book of the Oulipo’ and ‘The Best British Poetry 2015’.
He has an MA in Creative writing (and teaching CW) from Manchester Metropolitan University and in 2020 a PhD in Creative Writing (responding to the work of the New York poets Ron Padgett and Kenneth Koch) from Birmingham University. He has been a visiting lecturer at the Universities of Cumbria and Chester and has led workshops and read his poetry at various venues including Radio 4’s Poetry Please, the Essex Book Festival, Words By the Water in Keswick and the Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Jeremy loves to play with language in his poetry and these days increasingly this is involving Cymraeg which he has been learning for a number of years.
