Barry Cole (13 November 1936 – 26 June 2014) was a British poet.
Biography
Cole was born in
Woking, Surrey
Woking ( ) is a town and borough in northwest Surrey, England, around from central London. It appears in Domesday Book as ''Wochinges'' and its name probably derives from that of a Saxon landowner. The earliest evidence of human activity is fr ...
, and was educated at Balham Secondary School in
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
. He did military service in the
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...
from 1955 to 1957. His subsequent career included 1958 employment with
Reuters
Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world.
The agency was esta ...
news agency in London, working as a reporter (1965–70), as a senior editor (1974–94) at the
Central Office of Information
The Central Office of Information (COI) was the UK government's marketing and communications agency. Its Chief Executive reported to the Minister for the Cabinet Office. It was a non-ministerial department, and became an executive agency and a ...
, London. He was Northern Arts Fellow at the
University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
Newcastle University (legally the University of Newcastle upon Tyne) is a UK public research university based in Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England. It has overseas campuses in Singapore and Malaysia. The university is a red brick univer ...
and
Durham University (1970–72).
[David Belbin]
"Barry Cole: Critically acclaimed novelist and poet whose career was overshadowed by the death of his friend BS Johnson"
''The Independent'', 27 July 2014. He published several collections of poems and four novels.
WorldCat
/ref> His 1968 poetry collection, ''Moonsearch'', was a Poetry Book Society recommendation.[John Lucas]
"Other lives: Barry Cole obituary"
''The Guardian'', 15 July 2014. In 2015, Shoestring Press published a festschrift celebrating his life, edited by John Lucas. This included poems, a story, photographs, essays and Cole's final, innovative sequence of 13 poems, Broken Sonnets, which are marked by the use of ellipses to suggest gaps of memory or words that are too painful to be given expression.
In 1959, he married Rita Linihan
Bibliography
Poetry
* ''Blood Ties'' (Turret Books, 1967)
* ''Moonsearch'' (1968)
* ''Ulysses in the Town of Coloured Glass'' (London, Turret, 1968)
* ''The Visitors'' (1970)
* ''Vanessa in the City'' (Trigram Press, 1971)
* ''Pathetic Fallacies'' (London, Eyre Methuen, 1973)
* ''The Rehousing of Scaffardi'' (Richmond, Surrey: Keepsake Press, 1976)
* ''Dedications'' (Byron Press: 1977)
* ''Inside Outside: New and Selected Poems'' (Shoestring Press, 1997, )
* ''Ghosts Are People Too'' (Shoestring Press, 2003)
* ''Broken Sonnets'' (privately printed 'eyelet' chap book, 2008)
Novels
* ''A Run Across the Island'' (1968)
* ''Joseph Winter's Patronage'' (1969)
* ''In Search of Rita'' (Methuen, 1970)
* ''The Giver'' (Methuen, 1971)
References
External links
* John Lucas
"Other lives: Barry Cole obituary"
''The Guardian'', 15 July 2014.
People from Balham
1936 births
2014 deaths
English male poets
20th-century English poets
20th-century English male writers
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