Val Warner was a poet, editor and translator who was best known for helping to increase the salience of poet

Charlotte Mew Charlotte Mary Mew (15 November 1869 – 24 March 1928) was an English poet whose work spans the eras of Victorian poetry and Modernism. Early life and education Mew was born in Bloomsbury, London, daughter of the architect Frederick Mew (18 ...

's work. Warner was the only child of two schoolteachers and grew up in Harrow, London. She went on to study modern history at

Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, Ir ...

. She initially found work as a school librarian and freelance copy-editor before holding the posts of Creative Writing Fellow at

Swansea University , former_names=University College of Swansea, University of Wales Swansea , motto= cy, Gweddw crefft heb ei dawn , mottoeng="Technical skill is bereft without culture" , established=1920 – University College of Swansea 1996 – University of Wa ...

and Writer-in-Residence at the

University of Dundee The University of Dundee; . Abbreviated as ''Dund.'' for post-nominals. is a public university, public research university based in Dundee, Scotland. It was founded as a University college#United Kingdom, university college in 1881 with a donation ...

. As well as publishing her own poetry collections, Warner also published a translation of ''The Centenary Corbière'' by

Tristan Corbière Tristan Corbière (18 July 1845 – 1 March 1875), born Édouard-Joachim Corbière, was a French poet born in Coat-Congar, Ploujean (now part of Morlaix) in Brittany, where he lived most of his life before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 29 ...

in 1975 and an edition of

's collected poems and prose in 1981. Along with other scholarly work in the 1980s, this collection helped in renewing wider interest in Mew's work. Warner became increasingly reclusive in the last years of her life. She sold a house in Harrow that she had inherited from her parents and then subsequently moved to a late-Victorian terraced house in Hackney where she continued to live for the rest of her life. The house lacked running water, heating and cooking facilities. She survived on a diet of raw onions, soya mince and chickpeas. Her body was discovered after a forced entry into her house by police on 10 October 2020, due to a concerned friend contacting them about a lack of a communication with her. She had died alone and no ascertainable cause of death was reported by the coroner after an autopsy was conducted in November 2020.

Awards and recognition

Warner received the

Eric Gregory Award The Eric Gregory Award is a literary award given annually by the Society of Authors for a collection by British poets under the age of 30. The award was founded in 1960 by Dr. Eric Gregory to support and encourage young poets. In 2021, the seven ...

in 1975 and was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, the RSL has about 600 Fellows, elec ...

in 1998.

Bibliography

* * * * * * * {{Cite book , last=Corbiere , first=Tristan , title=The Centenary Corbière , last2=Warner , first2=Val , publisher=

Carcanet Press Carcanet Press is a publisher, primarily of poetry, based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1969 by Michael Schmidt. In 2000 it was named the '' Sunday Times'' millennium Small Publisher of the Year. History ''Carcanet'' was originally a li ...

, year=2006 , isbn=9781857547115

References

Poetry Women poets Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford