The Threadbare Coat

Thomas A Clark lives in a fishing village on the east coast of Scotland. Five books of his poetry have been published by Carcanet, including The Hundred Thousand Places (2009), Yellow & Blue (2014), Farm by the Shore (2017), The Threadbare Coat (2020) and that which appears (2024). Numerous small books, cards and editions from his own Moschatel Press investigate ways that the presentation of poetry can inform sense and nuance. During the summer months, with the artist Laurie Clark, he runs Cairn Gallery, a space for minimal and conceptual art.


Matthew Welton's poems take a playful approach to language and often blur the boundaries between poetry and other forms, such as fiction, music and visual art.
His three previous Carcanet books are: The Book of Matthew (2003), We needed coffee but we'd got ourselves convinced that the later we left it the better it would taste, and, as the country grew flatter and the roads became quiet and dusk began to colour the sky, you could guess from the way we retuned the radio or unfolded the map and commented on the view that the tang of determination had overtaken our thoughts, and when, fidgety and untalkative but almost home, we drew up outside the all-night restaurant, it felt like we might just stay in the car, listening to the engine and the gentle sound of the wind (2009) and The Number Poems (2016).
Matthew Welton was born in Nottingham, lives in Nottingham, and teaches creative writing at the University of Nottingham. Author photo credit: Jack Tinney