Angela Kirby (née Birtwistle; born 4 July 1932) is an English poet and non-fiction writer.
Born 4 July 1932 in rural Lancashire, England, the eighth and last child of a cotton-mill owner James Astley Birtwistle and his wife Muriel Mary (née Marwood).
A brother, Col. Michael Albert Astley Birtwistle, was a High Sheriff of Lancashire, and she was a cousin of race horse trainer Monica Dickinson (née Birtwistle), the mother of Michael Dickinson.
She is the grandmother of Marine Sam Alexander MC killed while on a patrol in 2011 Afghanistan in 2011 by an improvised explosive device (IED).
With the encouragement of her sister Iris (IM) Birtwistle she began to write poetry as a child and was first published in 1960 but more regularly from 1981.