I went to a reading tonight by an author: his name was Charles Tomlinson,
he's quite elderly now, he has those funny glasses I don't recall the term
for, with one eye black and the other clear; he and his wife had come up
from Gloucestershire to Leicester by bus (!) which really dates them, his
first set was, by the organisers' decision not his, 40 minutes long. He, not
anybody else, paced it beautifully, despite his years he could still project
too, a particular frisson for me was that he was the first poet I ever saw
read in this town, about eleven years ago, and I could still remember that
reading and compare it with now, a fact which delighted both him and his
spouse (Me: you read that Fox poem. CT: Oh, the Fox Gallery. Mrs CT
(beaming): don't you remember Charles, that was when we first came here.
Fancy you (to me) remembering that)
Tomlinson certainly was one of the finest poets of the Brit 1950's. His
debut volume, The Necklace, is full of polished gems, rather cool in tone,
and very aesthetic, but very hard to forget. His finest later work is
probably as a translator and collaborator ( I think his versions of
Ungaretti the best I have seen in English while he did some good stuff with
Octavio Paz and edited that interesting curiosity the Oxford Book of
Translations - think that's the right title - )
He's mellowed now, maybe not the poet his younger self was but there's a
human warmth there, which wasn't quite apparent 11 years ago, as evidenced
in a little piece he read about his youngest daughter's first child, who
would kiss everybody but him, he said with a smile.
Best
Dave
David Bircumshaw
Leicester, England
Home Page
A Chide's Alphabet
Painting Without Numbers
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