Harold W. Massingham (25 October 1932
Mexborough
Mexborough is a town in the City of Doncaster in South Yorkshire, England. Situated between Manvers and Denaby Main, it lies on the River Don close to where it joins the River Dearne, and the A6023 road runs through the town. It is contiguous ...
—13 March 2011) was an English poet.
Life
He was the son of H. W. Massingham (a collier from Mexborough). He attended the same Mexborough Grammar School as the
Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
poet and
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate (plural: poets laureate) is a poet officially appointed by a government or conferring institution, typically expected to compose poems for special events and occasions. Albertino Mussato of Padua and Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ...
Ted Hughes
Edward James "Ted" Hughes (17 August 1930 – 28 October 1998) was an English poet, translator, and children's writer. Critics frequently rank him as one of the best poets of his generation and one of the twentieth century's greatest wri ...
but in a class two years below.
He taught at the
University of Manchester
, mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity
, established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...
; his students included Steven Waling, and
Trevor Griffiths
Trevor (Trefor (disambiguation), Trefor in the Welsh language) is a common given name or surname of Welsh language, Welsh origin. It is an habitational name, deriving from the Welsh ''tre(f)'', meaning "homestead", or "settlement" and ''fawr'', ...
.
Harold Massingham lived in Mexborough through his childhood, and then Manchester from his university days, until moving with his wife Pat to Spain in the 1990s. He published three volumes of poetry in 1965, 1972 and 1992.
His work was published in ''The New Yorker,'' and ''Alhambra Poetry Calendar''.
Under the pseudonym ‘Mass’ he set crosswords for national newspapers and magazines for more than 30 years. He also compiled chess puzzles.
Awards
* 1968
Cholmondeley Award
The Cholmondeley Awards () are annual awards for poetry given by the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom. Awards honour distinguished poets, from a fund endowed by the Dowager Marchioness of Cholmondeley in 1966. Since 1991 the award has bee ...
s for Poets
Work
Poetry broadsheets
* ''Doomsday''
* ''The Magician,'' Manchester: Phoenix Pamphlet Poets Press, 1969
* ''Seafarer''
* ''Wanderer''
* ''The Magician's Attic''
Poetry books
*
Chris Jones, ''Strange likeness: the use of Old English in twentieth-century poetry,'' Oxford University Press, 2006
/ref>
* ''Frost Gods,'' Macmillan, 1972
* ''Sonatas & Dreams'', Littlewood Arc, 1992
* ''Selected Poems'', Calder Valley Press, 2021
Anthology
*
*
References
External links
''Harold Massingham Obituary,'' Yorkshire Post, 19 March 2011
Paul Britton, ''Farewell to ‘Mass’: Crossword king Harold Massingham dies, aged 78,'' Manchester Evening News, 23 March 2011
{{DEFAULTSORT:Massingham, Harold
1932 births
2011 deaths
People from Mexborough
Academics of the University of Manchester
British male poets
20th-century English poets
20th-century English male writers