Overview
James Byrne is a poet, editor and translator, born near London in the UK. His collections of poetry include The Overmind (Broken Sleep Books, 2024), Places you Leave (Arc Publications, 2022) The Caprices, a response to Francisco Goya's ‘Los Caprichos’ (Arc, 2019) and Everything Broken Up Dances (Tupelo Books, 2017). Nightsongs for Gaia: New and Selected Poems, was published by Arc in 2025 and this includes over twenty years of his published poetry.
Byrne edited The Wolf, an influential, internationally-minded literary magazine between 2002 and 2017. He co-translated and co-edited Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets (Cornell University Press, 2012) and co-edited I am a Rohingya, the first book of Rohingya refugee poems in English. In 2024, with the author, Byrne co-translated Rohingya poet Ro Mehrooz (Poems Written Through Barbed-Wire Fences).
Recent awards for his poetry have included a Cholmondeley Award and Travelling Scholarship from the Society of Authors in the UK. His co-translation of Ashur Etwebi was included in the Best Literary Translations of 2024, published by Deep Vellum Press.
Research Focus
- Modern and Contemporary Global Poetries
- Translation
- Creative Writing
