Daniel Hinds is a poet from Newcastle. His debut poetry collection New Famous Phrases was published by Broken Sleep Books in March 2025.
He is a BBC New Creative, New Writing North North East Poet, and Ilkley Literature Festival New Northern Poet. He is a North East Culture Award 2024 Newcomer of the Year finalist. His writing focuses on myths, folklore, and nature, and includes ekphrastic poems, eco-poems, and experimental prose poem reviews that blur the distinction between creative and critical practices.
His writing has been recognised in various writing competitions, awards, and prizes. He won the Poetry Society’s Timothy Corsellis Young Critics Prize 2018 and his experimental prose poem review of Jay Bernard’s Surge was one of the winners of the Shortlist Book Review Competition 2020, held in celebration of the Dylan Thomas Prize by Swansea University. His poetry was commended in the National Centre for Writing’s UEA New Forms Award 2021, and was recognised in Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year, Volume 13. He was also one of the winners of The Broken Spine’s Flash Fiction Competition. He was shortlisted for the Cinnamon Press Poetry Pamphlet Award 2022, Streetcake Experimental Writing Prize 2019, and the Terry Kelly Poetry Prize 2018, and longlisted for the Cinnamon Press Poetry Pamphlet Prize 2021. Two of his poems were highly commended in the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts Water Poetry Competition, judged by W. N. Herbert and John Burnside. These poems were displayed at Northern Stage and projected onto Newcastle University’s Percy Building.
His poetry has been published in various literary magazines, anthologies, audio platforms, and national newspapers, including: The London Magazine, The New European, Wild Court, Poetry Salzburg Review, Stand, Southword, Shearsman, Prairie Fire, The Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Blackbox Manifold, The Honest Ulsterman, Iamb, Fly on the Wall Press Magazine, The Morning Star, Finished Creatures, Crannóg, Rewilding: An Ecopoetic Anthology, Newcastle University’s One Planet Anthology, Oxford University’s A Personal History of Home and A Tapestry of Homes anthologies, Amethyst Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, Perverse, Streetcake Magazine, Riggwelter, Orbis, The Seventh Quarry, New Contrast, The Mechanics’ Institute Review, York Literary Review, Poetry Scotland, Poetry and Covid, bind, Acid Bath Publishing’s The Worst Best Years: A Student Life Anthology, Travels & Tribulations, A Pocket Anthology of Addiction & Recovery, and Night Terrors, Fenland Poetry Journal, Skylight 47, StepAway Magazine, The Lake, Visual Verse, Carousel, the lickety~split, The Wilfred Owen Association Journal, Selcouth Station, Nightingale & Sparrow, Black Bough Poetry, Abridged, Poetry Bus Magazine, Confluence, Ropes Literary Journal, Fragmented Voices, Porridge, Osmosis Press, Fevers of the Mind, Spellbinder, Creative Ireland’s 2022 Poetry Anthology Chasing Shadows, Full Mood Mag, Cardigan Press’s Byline Legacies anthology, Milk and Cake Press’s Dead of Winter II and Dead of Winter III anthologies, Bent Key Publishing’s Ey Up Again anthology, The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press’s Ourselves in Rivers and Oceans anthology, BFS Horizons, The Storms, XMTR, and the Eat the Storms podcast. He has also had an essay published in Pre-Raphaelite Society Review.
He was part of a panel of judges for the NCLA Belonging Poetry Competition and contributed to New Writing North’s Dawn Chorus collective sound poem, which premiered at the Durham Book Festival. He is an Ilkley Literature Festival New Northern Poet 2023. Additionally, he was commissioned by the Ilkley Literature Festival, as one of their New Northern Poets 2022, to write and record a poem that premiered at the festival for National Poetry Day. His poetry also featured in a display at Wycliffe Hall for Creation Theatre’s production of As You Like It.
His audio piece, The Stone Men of Newcastle, a sequence of poems about the city’s statues and their place in contemporary Newcastle, has been broadcast on BBC platforms, including BBC Sounds and BBC Introducing Arts with Huw Stephens on BBC Radio 6 Music, as well as the Eat the Storms podcast and XMTR. The audio piece was commissioned by New Creatives, a talent development scheme supported by Arts Council England and BBC Arts and delivered by Tyneside Cinema and Naked Productions. He was recognised at the Vice-Chancellor of Newcastle University’s Celebrating Success event for The Stone Men of Newcastle. His stage adaptation of The Stone Men of Newcastle was a Runner-Up for the Pomegranate Poetry Theatre Prize, and was performed by Théâtre Volière at the Poetry Plays Festival at the Cockpit Theatre, London.
He graduated from Newcastle University with a first class degree in English Literature, and a Distinction in his English Literature 1500-1900 MA, for which he won two prestigious scholarships, the School Bursary Award and Excellence Scholarship.
He is a member of The Poetry Society and The Society of Authors.
Praise and Reviews for New Famous Phrases:
‘New Famous Phrases strikes with precision and purpose, bringing an ancient power to modern language. It feels as though Daniel Hinds has uncovered a hidden word-hoard, and with every line, the poems cut through to the truth. Reinventing the line-initial capitalization, these poems reshape tradition with controlled force. Every word works with intention and power, leaving a lasting mark on the mind of the reader.’
Professor David Morley FRSL, FURY (shortlisted The Forward Prize for Best Collection)
‘In New Famous Phrases, Daniel Hinds unearths sparkling treasures from the word-hoard. Classic themes are given witty and innovative twists: Apollo becomes the god of moonboots and Ted Hughes’s Crow inspires a mischievous magpie. Come and revel in the rites of spring, voyage with a young mariner, and enjoy innovative review-responses to contemporary voices. New Famous Phrases brims with freshness and virtuosity.’
Dr Yvonne Reddick, Burning Season (winner of the Laural Prize for Best UK First Collection of Ecopoetry)
‘Erudite, witty, visionary and humorous, this is a collection of unexpected swerves in dialogue with the ‘submerged voices’ of poetry’s bloodline. Blending song and story, this collection brings us inventive prose poem book reviews alongside insightful lyrics and fresh takes on mythology. Partly a testament to the artform itself, New Famous Phrases demonstrates a unique flair for sound and language. Hinds’ ability to turn a phrase transforms perspective.’
Dr John Challis, The Resurrectionists (The Guardian poetry book of the month)
‘New Famous Phrases is a sophisticated debut collection of poems that quirkily blend lyricism with a dialogic approach. These intense and dense poems, layered like geological memories and mindscapes, are inhabited by a multitude of conjured ghosts (from Dante and Shelley to W.S. Graham), inviting a conversation with the dead.’
Dr Ágnes Lehóczky, Swimming Pool
‘This is ambitious and lyrical new work with a wide and expansive outlook.’
Will Mackie, New Writing North https://newwritingnorth.com/journal/new-and-recent-poetry-from-the-north-spring-2025/
‘on the evidence of this substantial and accomplished volume, Hinds’s poetry certainly deserves the epithet Eliotic […] Hinds has an impressive talent at the aphorism that mark him out as an Eliotian poet in more than simply style’
‘Daniel Hinds is about as uncannily Eliotic as any contemporary poet gets, but his poetry is scored through with its own distinctiveness, precisely judged lyricism, and often astonishing aphoristic grasp.
New Famous Phrases is an unusually accomplished debut collection.’
Alan Morrison, review of New Famous Phrases in The Morning Star newspaper https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/uncanny-echoes
’the poetry within these pages is fresh, inventive (including prose poetry reviews) and sharp.’
’Buy New Famous Phrases if you like creative, inventive poetry that is rich in imagery and emotion that brings the old greats into the modern era with responses, challenges and respect.’
Paul Short, review of New Famous Phrases in The Book Bag, Paul Writes Poems https://paulwritespoems.com/2025/04/13/the-book-bag-new-famous-phrases-by-daniel-hinds/