Ian Radford

Ian was born in Cape Town, South Africa, and grew up partly in that region, as well as in Namibia. As a teenager, he emigrated with his family to the UK in 1998, and currently lives in London. He has enjoyed reading poetry since the age of 9 and, although he dabbled in writing poetry himself from time to time, he only began making serious efforts to do so following a diagnosis of dyslexia in 2024. Amongst his favourite poets are John Donne, William Blake, ee cummings, Jelalludin Rumi, Ryokan, Yunus Emre, and Leonard Cohen. He self-published his first collection of poetry in 2025, entitled, "Fingers Pointing at Polaris". He has recently begun submitting his poems to Literary Journals and is very pleased that The Poetry Lighthouse was his first acceptance.

Apart from poetry, Ian spends his free time: learning about subjects such as psychology (particularly cognitive and behavioural), human anatomy and physiology, ethology (particularly primatology), and modern history; playing chess and other puzzle games; watching touching, animated films (e.g. Studio Ghibli); and listening to a range of music genres, most notably, progressive rock.