[1] Shortly before leaving in 1981, he was awarded the Alexandria International Poetry Prize and received the medal and papyrus certificate from Jehan Sadat on the site of the ancient Pharos.
In 1983, after some time teaching Vietnamese boat people in northeastern Scotland, he and Jane moved to Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire (originally Huntingdonshire) where they have lived ever since – apart from a year on a Fulbright exchange in New Jersey 1990–91 – and where their two daughters were born.
He has tutored all ages for the Indian King Arts Centre in Camelford, Cornwall, for the Arvon Foundation and currently for the Poetry School in Cambridge, where he was until recently RLF Writing Fellow at Newnham College.
[5] Over the past forty-plus years, he has published more than twenty volumes of poetry, including two full Carcanet Press collections, To the War Poets[6] (2013) and The Silence[7] (2019), the latter featuring his long poem about Jean Sibelius.
Other recent volumes include Achill Island Tagebuch[19] (2018), Europa’s Flight (2019), Moments Musicaux[20] (2020), The Giddings (2021), Omniscience (2022), The Interpretation of Owls: Selected Poems (2023, edited by Kevin Gardner), and From the East: Sixty Huntingdonshire Codices (2024).
In May 2025, Renard Press will bring out Greening’s large format illustrated guide to poetry – a series of linked essays and poems, A High Calling, or Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?
A. Fanthorpe (Not My Best Side, with an introduction by A. E. Stallings, Baylor University Press, 2024), Iain Crichton Smith (Deer on the High Hills, Carcanet, 2021), and Geoffrey Grigson (Selected Poems, Greenwich Exchange, 2017).
"[30] Kevin Gardner writes in PN Review of the long poem about Sibelius: "The Silence is a compelling exploration of the pressure of fame and the burden of creativity.
The structure sets order at odds with chaos: formal quatrains work in counterpoint against lines of variable syllabic count, while a steady slant-rhyme scheme is disrupted by an adroit use of enjambment.
"[31] Of Achill Island Tagebuch, Martyn Crucefix writes: "Greening's long-established deftness with poetic form is on full display here but it is the (seeming) ease of encompassing that is so impressive.
The hedgerows of 'trickling fuchsia' and the 'decayed tooth' of Slievemore are conjoined with be-helmeted cycling jaunts, ill-informed tourists and European research students, while the writer frets about whether the Muses are going to turn up or the disturbing nature of his own dreams – all this alongside more newsworthy items like forest fires on the Greek mainland, Brexit (of course), the discovery of water on Mars and the release of the new Mission Impossible film.
Unsurprisingly, these houses are fertile territory for poets to roam across, as documented in Hollow Palaces ... a fabulous assemblage of work that does make you think about these buildings in new ways.
Mostly this is driven by the way the book is organised, grouped into what at first glance are surprising themes: Insiders, Ghosts & Echoes, Rites & Conversions, Fixtures & Fittings, Loyalties & Divisions, Arrivals & Departures, Dreams & Secrets, and Outsiders.
What this allows for is pleasing commonalities to pop up (Wendy Cope in conversation with Yeats in Lissadell is a particular treat), as we go below stairs, explore the gothic, peel back layers of artifice and patterning, on the walls and in the gardens.
"[33] Of The Interpretation of Owls, John Forth writes in London Grip: "Edited in consultation with the poet, this first American collection presents a poetic journey of more than forty years, and it is exceedingly well-travelled.
Arranged in sections to illustrate abiding interests and influences, the book comprises nearly 300 poems from twenty-two collections by eighteen publishers, and also previously uncollected and unpublished work.
"[34] Of From the East, John Whale writes in Stand: "In his hands the tercet is capable of a fine range which includes bold humour, subtle wit and delicate emotion.
[36] Contraflow: Lines of Englishness, 1922-2022 was named a 2023 best poetry book of the year by Rishi Dastidar in The Guardian[37] and by Graeme Richardson in the Sunday Times.