Maggie Butt

Maggie Butt has been writing all her life, as a journalist, BBC TV producer, creative writing academic, poet and novelist. She has published seven poetry collections and two historical novels (as Maggie Brookes.)

Her new collection is 'Wish - new and selected poems' published as Maggie Brookes-Butt, published by Greenwich Exchange in January 2025. Poems from Maggie's six previous collections – about the strength of women, concern for our planet, and hope in the power of love – are gathered here alongside bitter-sweet new poems about the joys and fears of a grandmother in this troubled, vulnerable and precious world.

'This is a poetry of miracles, unfailingly fresh and exuberant, written with clear-eyed, exemplary warmth. Her lines are flooded by intense experiences of a physical world, both lovely and threatened, and of human love whose tenderness is as 'long-lasting as uranium, thorium, light.’ Alison Brackenbury

After completing an English degree, Maggie Butt became a newspaper reporter, moving to BBC TV as a documentary writer, producer and director. She later returned to her first love of poetry, completing a PhD in creative writing from Cardiff University.

Maggie Butt's first pamphlet "Quintana Roo" was published by Acumen Publications in 2003. Her first full collection of poetry, "Lipstick", was published in March 2007 by Greenwich Exchange; a launch event was held at Keats House in Hampstead, North London. Her edited collection of essays "Story - The Heart of the Matter" was also published by Greenwich Exchange in October 2007. An e-book and MP3 "I Am The Sphinx" were published by Snakeskin online poetry journal in 2009. Her collection of short poems "petite" was published by Hearing Eye in 2010, and turned into a dance piece "Ashes" by choreographer Lesley Main.

"Ally Pally Prison Camp", published June 2011 by Oversteps Books, charts the use of Alexandra Palace in North London as a 'concentration camp' for civilian enemy aliens during the First World War. It tells the story of the internees through black and white photographs, the paintings of internee George Kenner, extracts from memoirs and letters, and Maggie Butt's own poems.The poems and stories from "Ally Pally Prison Camp" have been recorded brought alive for visitors to Alexandra Palace in a locative mobile phone app produced by Helen Bendon.

"Sancti Clandestini - Undercover Saints", published November 2012 by Ward-Wood Publications, is a fully illustrated poetry collection, which proposes some alternative, imaginary saints, including the Patron Saints of liars, looters, rank outsiders, compulsive hoarders, old dogs and infidel girls. 'If the proof of a poem is in the richness of response it provokes, the illustrations here are that response made visible - a testimony to the subtle layers in this tender but incisive poetry.' Philip Gross

Degrees of Twilight was published by The London Magazine Editions in July 2015. 'The passage of time is tangible in Maggie's fifth collection. These poems use history, memory, work and travel as lenses to examine the inevitable pains and sharp pleasures at the heart of our transient lives.'

Her sixth poetry collection 'everlove' was published by The London Magazine Editions in 2021. 'Here is a profound act of poetic, elegiac empathy, a love song to us all and to the earth we love, share and ravage. Formally versatile, musical, always precise, Maggie Butt offers us the long view, shining a light on history's legacy and our common humanity. This is a mature, devastating and ultimately redemptive work, engaging with the best and worst of the human condition in poems both personal and universal.' Jacqueline Saphra.

Maggie Butt taught creative writing at Middlesex University, London for 30 years, was Chair of the National Association of Writers in Education - (NAWE) from 2007-2012 and a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Kent. As well as being a writer she is a compulsive reader, hopeful gardener, dreadful cook, besotted grandmother and a Londoner to the bone, though she loves to swim in the sea.