Nicholas Moore (16 November 1918 – 26 January 1986) was an English poet, associated with the

New Apocalyptics The New Apocalyptics were a poetry grouping in the United Kingdom in the 1940s, taking their name from the anthology ''The New Apocalypse'' (1939), which was edited by J. F. Hendry (1912–1986) and Henry Treece. There followed the further antholog ...

in the 1940s, whose reputation stood as high as

Dylan Thomas Dylan Marlais Thomas (27 October 1914 – 9 November 1953) was a Welsh poet and writer whose works include the poems "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "And death shall have no dominion", as well as the "play for voices" ''Under ...

’s. He later dropped out of the literary world.

Biography

Moore was born in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, England, the elder child of the philosopher

G. E. Moore George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the founders of analytic philosophy. He and Russell led the turn from ideal ...

and Dorothy Ely. His paternal uncle was the poet, artist and critic

Thomas Sturge Moore Thomas Sturge Moore (4 March 1870 – 18 July 1944) was a British poet, author and artist. Biography Sturge Moore was born at 3 Wellington Square, Hastings, East Sussex, on 4 March 1870 and educated at Dulwich College, the Croydon School o ...

, his maternal grandfather was

OUP Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

editor and author George Herbert Ely and his brother was the composer Timothy Moore (1922–2003). He was educated at the

Dragon School ("Reach for the Sun") , established = 1877 , closed = , type = Preparatory day and boarding school and Pre-Prep school , religion = Church of England , president = , head_label = Head , head = Emma Goldsm ...

Oxford Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

Leighton Park School Leighton Park School is a co-educational Independent school (United Kingdom), independent school for both day and boarding pupils in Reading, Berkshire, Reading in South East England. The school's ethos is closely tied to the Quaker values, havin ...

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of Letter (alphabet), letters, symbols, etc., especially by Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process invo ...

, the

University of St Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

, and

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

. Moore was editor and co-founder of a literary review, ''Seven'' (1938–40), while still an undergraduate. ''Seven, Magazine of People's Writing'', had a complex later history: Moore edited it with John Goodland; it later appeared edited by Gordon Cruikshank, and then by Sydney D. Tremayne, after

Randall Swingler Randall Carline Swingler MM (28 May 1909 – 19 June 1967) was an English poet, writing extensively in the 1930s in the communist interest. Early life and education His was a prosperous upper middle class Anglican family in Aldershot, with an ...

bought it in 1941 from

Philip O'Connor __NOTOC__ __NOTOC__ Philip Marie Constant Bancroft O'Connor (8 September 1916 – 29 May 1998) was a British writer and surrealist poet, who also painted. He was one of the 'Wheatsheaf writers' of 1930s Fitzrovia (who took their name from a pub). ...

. While in Cambridge Moore became closely involved with literary London, in particular

Tambimuttu Meary James Thurairajah Tambimuttu (15 August 1915 – 23 June 1983) was a Tamil poet, editor, critic and publisher, who for many years played a significant part on the literary scenes of London and New York City. He founded in 1939 the respecte ...

. He published pamphlets under the

Poetry London ''Poetry London'' is a literary periodical based in London. Published three times a year, it features poems, reviews, and other articles. Profile Adopting the title of an earlier bimonthly publication which ran from 1939 to 1951, ''Poetry London' ...

imprint in 1941 (of George Scurfield,

G. S. Fraser George Sutherland Fraser (8 November 1915 – 3 January 1980) was a Scotland, Scottish poet, literary critic and academic. Biography Fraser was born in Glasgow, Scotland, later moving with his family to Aberdeen. He attended the University of ...

Anne Ridler Anne Barbara Ridler OBE (née Bradby) (30 July 1912 – 15 October 2001) was a British poet and Faber and Faber editor, selecting the Faber ''A Little Book of Modern Verse'' with T. S. Eliot (1941). Her ''Collected Poems'' ( Carcanet Pres ...

and his own work). This led to Moore becoming Tambimuttu's assistant. Moore later worked for the

Grey Walls Press Grey (more common in British English) or gray (more common in American English) is an intermediate color between black and white. It is a neutral or achromatic color, meaning literally that it is "without color", because it can be composed o ...

. In the meantime he had registered as a

conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...

. ''The Glass Tower'', a selected poems collection from 1944, appeared with illustrations by the young

Lucian Freud Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...

. In 1945 he edited ''The PL Book of Modern American Short Stories'', and won Contemporary Poetry's Patron Prize (judged that year by

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...

) for ''Girl with a Wine Glass''. In 1947 he won the

Harriet Monroe Harriet Monroe (December 23, 1860 – September 26, 1936) was an American editor, scholar, literary critic, poet, and patron of the arts. She was the founding publisher and long-time editor of ''Poetry'' magazine, first published in 1912. As a ...

Memorial Prize for ''Girls and Birds'' and various other poems. Later Moore encountered difficulty in publishing; he was in the unusual position for a British poet of having a higher reputation in the United States. His association with the "romantics" of the 1940s was, in fact, rather an inaccurate reflection of his style. In the 1950s he worked as a horticulturist, writing a book ''The Tall Bearded Iris'' (1956). In 1968 he entered 31 separate pseudonymous translations of a single

Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticism inherited fro ...

poem, in a competition for the ''

Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'', run by

George Steiner Francis George Steiner, FBA (April 23, 1929 – February 3, 2020) was a Franco-American literary critic, essayist, philosopher, novelist, and educator. He wrote extensively about the relationship between language, literature and society, and the ...

. Each translation focused on a different element of the poem: rhyme, pattern, tropes, symbolism, etc. producing vastly different results, to illustrate the inadequacies and lacunae produced in translation. This work was published in 1973 as ''Spleen''; it is also available online. ''Longings of the Acrobats'', a selected poems volume, was edited by

Peter Riley Peter Riley (born 1940) is a contemporary English poet, essayist, and editor. Riley is known as a Cambridge poet, part of the group loosely associated with J. H. Prynne which today is acknowledged as an important center of innovative poetry i ...

and published in 1990 by

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 ...

. An interview with Riley concerning Moore's rediscovery and later years appears as a documentary element within the "Guilty River" chapter of

Iain Sinclair Iain Sinclair FRSL (born 11 June 1943) is a writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London, recently within the influences of psychogeography. Biography Education Sinclair was born in Cardiff in 1943. From 1956 to 1961, he was educate ...

's novel ''Downriver''. According to Riley, Moore was extremely prolific and left behind many unpublished poems. An example of one of Moore's "pomenvylopes" – idiosyncratic documents consisting of poems and comments typed onto envelopes and posted to friends and acquaintances – appears online at ''

The Fortnightly Review ''The Fortnightly Review'' was one of the most prominent and influential magazines in nineteenth-century England. It was founded in 1865 by Anthony Trollope, Frederic Harrison, Edward Spencer Beesly, and six others with an investment of £9,000; ...

''. His ''Selected Poems'' was published by Shoestring Press in 2014.

Bibliography

* ''A Book for Priscilla'' (1941) * ''A Wish in Season'' (1941) * ''The Island and the Cattle'' (1941) * ''Buzzing Around with a Bee, and Other Poems, etc'' (1941) * ''The Cabaret, the Dancer, the Gentlemen'' (1942) * ''The Glass Tower'' (1944) * ''Thirty-Five Anonymous Odes'' (published anonymously, 1944) * ''The War of the Little Jersey Cows'' (published under the pseudonym "Guy Kelly", 1945) * ''The Anonymous Elegies and other poems'' (published anonymously, 1945) * ''Recollections of the Gala: Selected Poems 1943–48'' (1950) * ''The Tall Bearded Iris'' (1956) * ''Anxious To Please'' (1968) (published under the pseudonym (anagram) "Romeo Anschilo", 1995 by Oasis Books) * ''Identity'' (1969) * ''Resolution and Identity'' (1970) * ''Spleen'' (1973) * ''Lacrimae Rerum'' (1988) * ''Longings of the Acrobats: Selected Poems'' (1990) * ''Dronkhois Malperhu and Other Poems'' (1996) * ''The Orange Bed'' (2011) * ''Selected Poems'' (2014)

References

External links

''Nicholas Moore, Touched by Poetic Genius''
an article by John Yau in ''Hyperallergic''

was first published in book form as ''Spleen'' 1973 by Blacksuede Boot Press and Menard Press.
"A Pomenvylope by Nicholas Moore"
an essay with an example, by Martin Sorrell in The Fortnightly Review. {{DEFAULTSORT:Moore, Nicholas 1918 births 1986 deaths Writers from Cambridge People educated at The Dragon School People educated at Leighton Park School Alumni of the University of St Andrews Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge British modernist poets 20th-century English poets English conscientious objectors

Biography

Bibliography

References

Further reading

External links