Diana Woodcock

       Diana Woodcock is the author of seven chapbooks and six poetry collections, most recently Heaven Underfoot (winner of the 2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award), Holy Sparks (a finalist for the 2020 Paraclete Press Poetry Award) and Facing Aridity (a finalist for the 2020 Prism Prize for Climate Literature). A three-time Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best of the Net nominee, she is the recipient of the 2022 Codhill Press Pauline Uchmanowicz Poetry Award, the 2011 Vernice Quebodeaux Pathways Poetry Prize for Women (for her debut collection, Swaying on the Elephant’s Shoulders), and the 2007 Creekwalker Poetry Prize. Her grand prize-winning poem, “Music as Scripture,” was performed live onstage in Lincoln Park, San Francisco at Artists Embassy International’s 21st Dancing Poetry Festival. Her poems have been published in Best New Poets 2008, Women’s Review of Books, Nimrod, Crab Orchard Review, Southern Humanities Review, Spiritus, Comstock Review, and other literary journals and anthologies. Prior to teaching at VCUarts Qatar (since 2004), she worked for nearly eight years in Tibet, Macau and on the Thai/Cambodian border. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Lancaster University, where she researched poetry’s role in the search for an environmental ethic.