Carol Rumens
British poet

Carol Rumens FRSL (born Carol-Ann Lumley; 10 December 1944 – 25 April 2026) was a British poet.
Life and career
Carol Rumens was born Carol-Ann Lumley in Forest Hill, South London, in 1944. She won a scholarship to Manchester Grammar School and later studied Philosophy at London University, but left before completing her degree. She married David Rumens in 1965 (divorced 1985) and was mother to two daughters. She gained a Postgraduate Diploma in Writing for the Stage (with Distinction) from City College Manchester in 2002.
She taught at University of Kent at Canterbury (1983–85), Queen's University Belfast (1991–93 and 1995–98), University College Cork (1994), Stockholm University (1999), and University of Hull. As visiting Professor of Creative Writing, she has taught at the University of Wales, Bangor, and at the University of Hull.
Rumens was Poetry Editor for the publisher Quarto (1982–84) and the literary Review (1984–88). Her work has appeared in The Guardian(for whom she wrote the "Poem of the Week" column from 2007 until her death) and Harper's. She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984.
The public source identifies “Carol Rumens” as british poet. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Carol, Rumens and British.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5044535. VIAF identifies the subject as 64022963. The Library of Congress control number is n83016622. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1944, 2026, 1965 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carol Rumens” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.