Carol Rumens, who has died aged 81 after suffering from a brain tumour, was an inventive, discursive and cosmopolitan poet as well as a generous champion of poetry in her long-running weekly Guardian column. A recipient of the Cholmondeley award in 1984 and twice shortlisted for the Forward prize for best single poem, she also worked across several other genres with much success, publishing a novel, plays, translations, monographs and journalism.
Rumens’ skill as an educator and reader of poems, as well as her expertise in the craft, and her breadth of interest, were all brought to bear on her Poem of the Week column for the Guardian, which she began writing in October 2007 and continued until February this year. Here she introduced and unpacked the work of established and new poets, with incisive, expert guidance on navigating the poems’ shapes, sounds and contexts, and a deep engagement with readers’ comments. A selection of 52 of these poems and commentaries were collected as a book, Smart Devices, published by Carcanet in 2019.
