Lorraine Mariner was born in 1974, grew up in Upminster and attended Huddersfield University where she read English, and University College London where she read Library and Information Studies.

She lives in Blackheath and works at the Poetry Library, Southbank Centre. Her pamphlet ‘Bye For Now’ was published by The Rialto in 2005.

In 2005 she also received an Arts Council Writer’s Award and in 2007 her poem ‘Thursday’, published in ‘The Rialto’ magazine, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem.

Her collection ‘Furniture’ was published by Picador in 2009 and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

“Lorraine Mariner has a completely distinctive voice. The tone is dead-pan, but it lends itself perfectly to poems that make us laugh aloud, as well as poems that bring tears to the eyes. In the way that she achieves language that balances humour and pathos, and in her wry, unsentimental take on the world, she is a modern day Stevie Smith”
Carole Satyamurti, poet, translator and sociologist

“Completely original – both very funny and existentially bleak … No-one else is writing poems remotely like these”.
Magma

The Rialto Bridge Pamphlet ‘Bye for Now’ by Lorraine Mariner is here