Anthony Thwaite

Anthony Thwaite (1930-2021). Courtesy Waywiser Press.

Anthony Simon Thwaite OBE (23 June 1930 - 22 April 2021) was an English poet and critic, widely known as the editor of his friend Philip Larkin's collected poems and letters.

Life

Youth and education

Thwaite was born in Chester, and was mainly brought up in Yorkshire.

During World War II he stayed with relatives in the United States. At age 10 he crossed the Atlantic alone to spend the war years in and around Washington D.C. with an aunt and uncle. On D-Day in 1944 he was on his way home.

He attended Kingswood School in Bath (1944-1949), where a teacher, praising his Anglo-Saxon type riddles, encouraged him to think he was a poet. National Service near Leptis Magna in Libya, encouraged him further, both as a poet and as an amateur archaeologist (he eventually became a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries).

Thwaite came to early prominence as a poet. While still an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford, he published a pamphlet with the Fantasy Press in a series that included the early work of Larkin, Kingsley Amis and Elizabeth Jennings. Poems began to appear in The Listener, the New Statesman and The Times Literary Supplement, and with his first book reviews and a series of undergraduate articles, in The Spectator. At Oxford, he edited the weekly magazine Isis, became president of the Poetry Society and met his wife, Ann Thwaite, who became a biographer.

Career

In 1955, the Thwaite's went by ship to teach for 2 years in Japan, where their oldest child was born. There Thwaite's earliest book of poems was published, a tribute from his postgraduate students at the University of Tokyo. It was while he was there that the Marvell Press published Larkin's The Less Deceived and accepted the MS of his own Home Truths.

Thwaite returned to take up a graduate traineeship at the BBC. He had 8 years there, first as a radio producer (sharing at one stage an office with Louis MacNeice), then as Literary Editor of The Listener. In 1965, he took 2 years' unpaid leave to return to North Africa, this time as assistant professor at the University of Libya in Benghazi and with his wife and 4 daughters. A brief return to the BBC in 1967 ended when Thwaite was invited to be Literary Editor of the New Statesman, where his assistants were successively Claire Tomalin and James Fenton.

His subsequent career has included the following positions: Henfield writing fellow at the University of East Anglia, visiting professor at Kuwait University, Japan Foundation Fellowship at the University of Tokyo (1985–1986), co-editor of Encounter magazine (1973–1985), Poet-in-Residence at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. He also spent many years as an editor of the Poetry list at Secker and Warburg, and later as an editorial director of André Deutsch.

Thwaite judged many prizes and literary competitions, sat on literature advisory committees (Arts Council and British Council), presented numerous radio programmes and 'Writers World' on BBC2. In 1986. he was chairman of the Booker Prize judges. He edited selections (Longfellow, R. S. Thomas, Skelton), and anthologies, including Six Centuries of Verse, based on the Thames Television/Channel Four 16-part series with his narration spoken by actor John Gielgud. The English Poets, from Chaucer to Edward Thomas (1974) was based on a radio series he presented with his friend, Australian poet Peter Porter.

Thwaite was a regular book reviewer for The Observer and later for the Sunday Telegraph and The Guardian. He wrote an introduction to contemporary English poetry, which went into many editions and prepared 2 travelling exhibitions for the British Council. He travelled all over the world, reading his own poems and talking about other people's, from New Zealand to Argentina and Baghdad to Texas. He represented 'Literature' at British Week in Novosibirsk in Siberia and toured China with Malcolm Bradbury at the invitation of their governments. He has returned to Japan many times; the Penguin Book of Japanese Verse, which he edited with Geoffrey Bownas, is still in print.

His Late Poems and Going Out appeared after the Collected Poems. At the launch of his last (20th) book of poems, when he was 85, the distinguished audience (including Alan Hollinghurst, David Lodge, P.J. Kavanagh and Penelope Lively) gave some indication of the esteem in which he is held by his fellow writers.

He died on 22 April 2021 at the age of 90.

Writing

Praise for Anthony Thwaite's poetry has come from many fellow writers. Novelist Anthony Burgess commended him: "Very intelligent, also witty, with a wide stretch of subject matter and a great boldness."

Playwright and novelist Michael Frayn wrote, "I think of all the living poets whose work I know Anthony Thwaite speaks to me most strongly and intimately. He writes with simplicity and precision about difficult and ambiguous things....the vastness and richness of the past, the elusiveness of the present - and the heroic persistence of our efforts to fix some trace of all this."

Thwaite has been pleased to be called "a fine comic poet" by Sean O'Brien. Tobias Hill called him "a master of domestic disquiet" in The Times, reviewing his Collected Poems (2007). He wrote: "This is spectacular poetry. It deserves to be read: good readers deserve to read it."

Recognition

In 1968 Thwaite won the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize for The Stones of Emptiness, a collection of poems written during these years.

He was awarded the Order of the British Empire in the 1990 New Year Honours, for services to poetry.

He had 2 honorary doctorates, from the University of Hull and from the University of East Anglia.

He was a member of the Royal Society of Literature.

He had a poem included by Christopher Ricks in his Oxford Book of English Verse, and Thwaite is also well represented in Larkin's Oxford Book of Twentieth Century Verse.

Publications

Poetry

• Anthony Thwaite. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Poetry Society / Fantasy Press (Fantasy Poets 17), 1953.
• Poems. Tokyo: privately printed, 1957; London: Oxford University Press, 1963.
• Home Truths. Hessle, UK: Marvell Press, 1957.
• The Owl in the Tree: Poems. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.
• The Stones of Emptiness: Poems, 1963-1966. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1967.
• At Dunkeswell Abbey (broadside poem). London: Poem-of-the-Month Club, 1970.
• Penguin Modern Poets 18 (by Al Alvarez, Roy Fuller, & Anthony Thwaite). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1970.
• Points. London: Turret Books, 1972.
• Inscriptions: Poems, 1967–1972. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
• Jack. Hitchin, Hertfordshire, UK: Cellar Press, 1973.
• New Confessions. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
• The English Poets - From Chaucer to Edward Thomas (1974) with Peter Porter
• A Portion for Foxes. Oxford, UK, & New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.
• Twelve Poems. Stoke Ferry, UK: Daedalus Press, 1978.
• New Poetry 4 (1978) Arts Council anthology, editor with Fleur Adcock
• Victorian Voices. Oxford, UK, & New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
• Odyssey : Mirror of the Mediterranean (1981)
• Fourteen Poems. Wisbech, UK: Daedalus Press, 1982.
• Poems, 1953–1983. London: Secker & Warburg, 1984.
  • revised & expanded as Poems, 1953-1988. London: Hutchinson, 1989.
• Letter from Tokyo. London: Hutchinson, 1987.
• The Dust of the World. London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994.
• Selected Poems, 1956-1996. London: Enitharmon, 1997.
• A Different Country: New poems. London: Enitharmon, 2000.
• A Move in the Weather: Poems, 1994-2002. London: Enitharmon, 2003.
• Collected Poems. London: Enitharmon, 2007.
• Late Poems. London: Enitharmon, 2010.
• Going Out. London: Enitharmon, 2015.

Plays

• Telling Tales (illustrated by Simon Brett). Winscombe, Somerset, UK: Gruffyground, 1983.

Non-fiction

• Essays on Contemporary English Poetry: Hopkins to the present day. Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1957.
• Contemporary English Poetry: An introduction. London: Heinemann, 1959.
  • revised & expanded as Twentieth-Century English Poetry: An introduction. London: Heinemann / New York: Barnes & Noble, 1978.
• Japan in Colour (photos by Roloff Beny). London: Thames & Hudson, 1967; New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.
• The Deserts of Hesperides: An experience of Libya. New York: Roy Publishers, 1969.
• Poetry Today, 1960-1973. Harlow, UK: Longman / British Council, 1973.
  • revised & expanded as Poetry Today: A critical guide to British poetry, 1960-1984. London & New York: Longman / British Council, 1985.
  • revised & expanded as ''Poetry Today: A critical guide to British poetry, 1960-1995. London & New York: Longman / British Council, 1996.
• Roloff Beny in Italy (with Peter Porter; photos by Roloff Beny). London: Thames & Hudson, 1974; New York: Harper & Row, 1974; Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1974
• Odyssey: Mirror of the Mediterranean (photos by Roloff Beny). London: Thames & Hudson, 1981; New York: Harper & Row, 1981; Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1981.
• Contemporary Writers: Penelope Lively. London: British Council, 1988.

Juvenile

• Beyond the Inhabited World: Roman Britain. London: Andre Deutsch, 1976; New York: Seabury, 1976.

Translated

• The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse (translated & edited with Geoffrey Bownas). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1964.

Edited

• Oxford Poetry, 1954 (edited with Jonathan Price). Oxford, UK: Fantasy Press, 1954.
• New Poems 1961: A PEN anthology of contemporary poetry (edited with Hilary Corke and William Plomer). London: Hutchinson, 1961.
• Poems for Shakespeare 3. London: Globe Playhouse Trust, 1974.
• Larkin at Sixty. London: Faber, 1982.
• Poetry, 1945-1980 (edited with John Mole). Harlow, Essex, UK: Longman, 1983.
• Six Centuries of Verse. London: Thames Methuen, 1984.
• Philip Larkin, Collected Poems. London: Marvell Press / Faber, 1988; New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1988.
• Philip Larkin, Selected Letters, 1940-1985. London & Boston: Faber, 1992.
• R.S. Thomas. London: Pheonix Press (Everyman's Poetry), 1996.
• Longfellow. London: Dent, 1996; New York: Barnes & Noble, 2002.
• Paeans for Peter Porter: A celebration for Peter Porter on his 70th birthday, 16 February 1999. London: Bridgewater Press, 1999.
• Philip Larkin, Further Requirements: Interviews, broadcasts, statements, and book reviews, 1952-85. London: Faber, 2001.
• George MacBeth, Selected Poems. London: Enitharmon, 2002.
• The Ruins of Time: Antiquarian and archaeological poems. London: Eland, 2006.

Interviews

• Anthony Thwaite: In conversation with Peter Dale and Ian Hamilton. London: BTL, 1999.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Anthony Thwaite reads from 'Going Out'

Audio / video

• Anthony Thwaite: Reading from his poems. London: Poetry Archive, 2005.

See also

• List of British poets
• List of literary critics

References

• Hans Osterwalder (1991) British Poetry Between the Movement and Modernism: Anthony Thwaite and Philip Larkin

External links

Poems

• "Ancestors"
• "Annunciation"

Audio / video

• Anthony Thwaite (b. 1930) at The Poetry Archive
• Anthony Thwaite's Poetry, weblog
• Anthony Thwaite at YouTube

Books

• Anthony Thwaite at Amazon.com

About

• Anthony Thwaite at the British Council
• Anthony Thwaite at Waywiser Press
• Anthony Thwaite at the Curtis Brown Agency
• Anthony Thwaite obituary, The Times
• Anthony Thwaite obituary, The Guardian