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Philip Hobsbaum
Philip Dennis Hobsbaum (29 June 1932 – 28 June 2005) was a British teacher, poet and critic. Life Hobsbaum was born into a Polish Jewish family in London, and brought up in Bradford, Yorkshire, where he attended Belle Vue Boys' Grammar School. He read English at Downing College, Cambridge, where he was taught and heavily influenced by F. R. Leavis. At Cambridge he took over the editing of the magazine ''delta'' from Peter Redgrove. After Cambridge, he worked as a school teacher in London from 1955 to 1959, when he moved to Sheffield to study for a PhD under William Empson. In 1962 he took up an academic position at Queen's University, Belfast, and moved again in 1966, to take up a post in the University of Glasgow. He was awarded a personal chair in 1985, and retired from the University in 1997; he remained in Glasgow until his death in 2005. The Group(s) Hobsbaum's most direct impact on literature was as the animating force behind ''The Group'', a sequence of writing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poet
A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or written), or they may also perform their art to an audience. The work of a poet is essentially one of communication, expressing ideas either in a literal sense (such as communicating about a specific event or place) or metaphorically. Poets have existed since prehistory, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary greatly in different cultures and periods. Throughout each civilization and language, poets have used various styles that have changed over time, resulting in countless poets as diverse as the literature that (since the advent of writing systems) they have produced. History In Ancient Rome, professional poets were generally sponsored by patrons, wealthy supporters including nobility and military officials. For inst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Lucie-Smith
John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith (born 27 February 1933), known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is a Jamaican-born English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster. He has been highly prolific in these fields, writing or editing over a hundred books, his subjects gradually shifting around the late 1960s from mostly literature to mostly art. Biography Lucie-Smith was born in Kingston, Jamaica, the son of Mary Frances (née Lushington) and John Dudley Lucie-Smith. He moved to the United Kingdom in 1946.BiographRetrieved 4 October 2018./ref> He was educated at The King's School, Canterbury, and, after a little time in Paris, he read history at Merton College, Oxford, from 1951 to 1954. After serving in the Royal Air Force as an education officer and working as a copywriter, he became a full-time writer (as well as anthologist and photographer). He succeeded Philip Hobsbaum in organising The Group, a London-centred poets' group. At the beginning of the 1980s he conducted several ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeff Torrington
Jeff Torrington (31 December 1935 – 11 May 2008) was a novelist from Glasgow in Scotland. His novels draw on the changing face of modern Scotland. ''Swing Hammer Swing'' (1992) was set during the demolition of the old Gorbals. It took 30 years to write. ''The Devil's Carousel'' (1998) drew on the decline of a fictionalised version of the Rootes/Chrysler car plant at Linwood. Torrington worked there for eight years, as a telex sequencer, before the plant's closure. ''Swing Hammer Swing'' was Whitbread Book of the Year in 1992. Torrington's first published stories appeared in newspapers. He later attended a Paisley writers' group set up by James Kelman and a creative writing group in Glasgow associated with Philip Hobsbaum, which also included Kelman, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochhead, Alasdair Gray and Aonghas MacNeacail Aonghas MacNeacail (born 7 June 1942), nickname ''Aonghas dubh'' or ''Black Angus'', is a contemporary writer in the Scottish Gaelic language. Early life MacNeac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aonghas MacNeacail
Aonghas MacNeacail (born 7 June 1942), nickname ''Aonghas dubh'' or ''Black Angus'', is a contemporary writer in the Scottish Gaelic language. Early life MacNeacail was born in Uig on the Isle of Skye on 7 June 1942. He was raised in Idrigil, speaking Gaelic as a child. He was registered at birth as Angus Nicolson, but later changed his official name to "Aonghas MacNeacail," the Scottish Gaelic version of his name. He attended Uig Primary School and Portree High School, and from 1968 the University of Glasgow where he was one of a group of young writers who gathered around Philip Hobsbaum which also included James Kelman, Tom Leonard, Alasdair Gray, Liz Lochhead and Jeff Torrington. Career Besides drawing on Gaelic traditions, MacNeacail is influenced by the Black Mountain School of the US. He has held writing fellowships in Scotland, including residences at the Gaelic college of Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Sabhal Mòr Ostaig () (Great Barn of Ostaig) is a public higher educati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Leonard (poet)
Tom Leonard (22 August 1944 – 21 December 2018) was a Scottish poet, writer and critic. He was best known for his poems written in Glaswegian dialect, particularly his ''Six Glasgow Poems'' and ''The Six O'Clock News''. His work frequently dealt with the relationship between language, class and culture. Biography Leonard was born in Glasgow in 1944. His father was a train-driver who had moved to Scotland from Dublin in 1916. His mother, also of Irish descent, came from Saltcoats and had previously worked at the Nobel dynamite factory in Ardeer. Tom was the youngest of four children - he had two brothers and one sister. He commenced study on a degree at the University of Glasgow in 1967, but left after two years. While there, he encountered poets including Tom McGrath, Alan Spence, Aonghas MacNeacail and Philip Hobsbaum, and also acted as editor of the university magazine. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Kelman
James Kelman (born 9 June 1946) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright and essayist. His novel '' A Disaffection'' was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. Kelman won the 1994 Booker Prize with ''How Late It Was, How Late''. In 1998, Kelman was awarded the Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Awards, Glenfiddich Spirit of Scotland Award. His 2008 novel ''Kieron Smith, Boy'' won both of Scotland's principal literary awards: the Saltire Society Literary Awards, Saltire Society's Book of the Year and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book Awards, Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year. Life and work Born in Glasgow, Kelman says: My own background is as normal or abnormal as anyone else's. Born and bred in Govan and Drumchapel, inner city tenement to the housing scheme homeland on the outer reaches of the city. Four brothers, my mother a full time parent, my father in the picture framemaking and gilding t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liz Lochhead
Liz Lochhead Hon FRSE (born 26 December 1947) is a Scottish poet, playwright, translator and broadcaster. Between 2011 and 2016 she was the Makar, or National Poet of Scotland, and served as Poet Laureate for Glasgow between 2005 and 2011. Early life Elizabeth Anne Lochhead was born in Craigneuk, a "little ex-mining village just outside Motherwell", Lanarkshire. Her mother and father had both served in the army during the Second World War, and later, her father was a local government clerk. In 1952, the family moved into a new council house in the mining village of Newarthill, where her sister was born in 1957. Though she was encouraged by her teachers to study English, Lochhead was determined to go to Glasgow School of Art where she studied between 1965 and 1970. After graduation Lochhead taught art at High Schools in Glasgow and Bristol, a career at which she says she was "terrible" Career Having written poetry as a child and whilst studying at Art School, Lochhead won a B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alasdair Gray
Alasdair James Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was a Scottish writer and artist. His first novel, ''Lanark'' (1981), is seen as a landmark of Scottish fiction. He published novels, short stories, plays, poetry and translations, and wrote on politics and the history of English and Scots literature. His works of fiction combine realism, fantasy, and science fiction with the use of his own typography and illustrations, and won several awards. He studied at Glasgow School of Art from 1952 to 1957. As well as his book illustrations, he painted portraits and murals, including one at the Òran Mór venue and one at Hillhead subway station. His artwork has been widely exhibited and is in several important collections. Before ''Lanark'', he had plays performed on radio and TV. His writing style is postmodern and has been compared with those of Franz Kafka, George Orwell, Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino. It often contains extensive footnotes explaining the works that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard MacLaverty
Bernard MacLaverty (born 14 September 1942) is an Irish fiction writer and novelist. His novels include '' Cal'' and ''Grace Notes''. He has written five books of short stories. Biography ''MacLaverty'' was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and educated at Holy Family Primary School in the Duncairn district and then at St Malachy's College. He worked as a medical laboratory technician and was a mature student at Queen's University Belfast. He lived there until 1975, when he moved to Scotland with his wife, Madeline, and four children (Ciara, Claire, John, and Jude). He initially lived in Edinburgh and then the Isle of Islay before settling in the West End of Glasgow. He was Writer-in-Residence at the Universities of Aberdeen, Liverpool John Moores, Augsburg and Iowa State. He was the Ireland Fund Artist-in-Residence in the Celtic Studies Department of St. Michael's College, University of Toronto in October 2007. Work MacLaverty's 1980 novel ''Lamb'' is about faith, rela ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stewart Parker
James Stewart Parker (20 October 1941 – 2 November 1988) was a Northern Irish poet and playwright. Biography He was born in Sydenham, Belfast, of a Protestant working-class family. His birthplace is marked by an Ulster History Circle blue plaque. While still in his teens, he contracted bone cancer and had a leg amputated. He studied for an MA in Poetic Drama at Queen's University, Belfast, on a scholarship, before commencing teaching in the United States at Hamilton College and Cornell University. Parker was a member of a group of young writers that included Seamus Heaney and Bernard MacLaverty in the early 1960s at Queen's University in Belfast. In '' British Poetry since 1945'', Edward Lucie-Smith calls him "a rawer, rougher, more unformed poet than either of the other two Belfast poets presented here" (i.e. Seamus Heaney and Derek Mahon). He notes that all three are post-Movement and neo-Georgian, owing little to William Butler Yeats and not much more to Patrick Kavanagh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Derek Mahon
Derek Mahon (23 November 1941 – 1 October 2020) was an Irish poet. He was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland but lived in a number of cities around the world. At his death it was noted that his, "influence in the Irish poetry community, literary world and society at large, and his legacy, is immense". President of Ireland Michael D Higgins said of Mahon; "he shared with his northern peers the capacity to link the classical and the contemporary but he brought also an edge that was unsparing of cruelty and wickedness." Biography Derek Mahon was born on 23 November 1941 as the only child of Ulster Protestant working-class parents. His father and grandfather worked at Harland and Wolff while his mother worked at a local flax mill. During his childhood, he claims he was something of a solitary dreamer, comfortable with his own company yet aware of the world around him. Interested in literature from an early age, he attended Skegoneill Primary school and then the Royal Belfast Aca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Longley
Michael Longley, (born 27 July 1939, Belfast, Northern Ireland), is an Anglo-Irish poet. Life and career One of twin boys, Michael Longley was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to English parents, Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited ''Icarus''. He was the Ireland Professor of Poetry from 2007 to 2010, a cross-border academic post set up in 1998, previously held by John Montague, Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill, and Paul Durcan. He was succeeded in 2010 by Harry Clifton. North American editions of Longley's work are published by Wake Forest University Press. Over 50 years he has spent much time in Carrigskeewaun, County Mayo, which has inspired much of his poetry. His wife, Edna, is a critic on modern Irish and British poetry. They have three children. Their daughter is artist Sarah Longley. An atheist, Longley describes himself as a "sentimental" disbeliever. On 14 January 20 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
