Robert Wells (born 1947) is a UK poet and fellow of the

Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...

. Wells was born in Oxford, where his father was a don and his mother a teacher. He attended

King's College, Cambridge King's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, the college lies beside the River Cam and faces out onto King's Parade in the centre of the city ...

from 1965 to 1968, and worked as a woodsman on Exmoor in 1977, the year ''The Winter's Task: Poems'' was published. From 1979 to 1982 he taught English in Italy, Iran, and Leicester. He has written freelance and translated

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...

and

Theocritus Theocritus (; grc-gre, Θεόκριτος, ''Theokritos''; born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry. Life Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from hi ...

. Early on, he collaborated with his friends Dick Davis and Clive Wilmer on a book of poems, ''Shade Mariners''. Michael Schmidt included some of his poems in two anthologies. Carcanet published his poetry books ''The Winter's Task'' (1977), ''Selected Poems'' (1986), ''Lusus'' (1999) and "The Day and other Poems" (2006), and his verse translations, Virgil's ''Georgics'' (1982) and Theocritus' ''Idylls'' (1988). His ''Collected Poems and Translations'' was published in 2009. Wells' poetry was inspired first by Virgil's ''

Georgics The ''Georgics'' ( ; ) is a poem by Latin poet Virgil, likely published in 29 BCE. As the name suggests (from the Greek word , ''geōrgika'', i.e. "agricultural (things)") the subject of the poem is agriculture; but far from being an example ...

'' and then by his own experiences working as a woodsman.Tom Payne. What Hesiod and Virgil can teach us.Times Literary Supplement. January 10, 2014
/ref> In it, he explored man's experience of "landscape, how it might be lived in and worked in, recorded and celebrated." Staudt says that "The Winter's Tale," the title poem of ''The Winter's Task'', "celebrates the laborer's pursuit of work for its own sake, as he moves out of himself and lays hold of a fundamental and objective reality ". He is married, with two children, and lives in France.

Books

*The Winter's Task (1977) *Selected Poems (1986) *Lusus (1999) *The Day and other poems (2006) *Virgil's Georgics (1982) (verse translation) *Theocritus' Idylls (1988) (verse translation) *Collected Poems and Translations (2009)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wells, Robert 1947 births Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature British expatriates in France Living people 20th-century English poets 21st-century English poets 21st-century English male writers 20th-century English male writers