Harry Kemp (1911-1994), Poems in Variety, 1977. Courtesy Biblio.co.uk.
Harry Vincent Kemp (11 December 1911 - 2 September 1994) was an English poet who taught mathematics for a living.[1]
Life[]
Kemp was born in southern England, the son of an engineer who worked in the Far East.[1] He was educated at Stowe and then read mathematics at Clare College, Cambridge.[1]
After graduation he worked as a part-time schoolmaster.[1]
The Independent described Kemp as "a small, ruddy-faced man, old-fashioned in his dress, credulous in his judgements" and a "lively raconteur with a roving and satirical eye." During his lifetime, he self-published 10 books of poetry.[1]
In the 1930's he married Alix Eierman, the refugee daughter of a German Jewish businessman. The couple had a son and a daughter.[1]
In 1935 Kemp's close friend James Reeves sent 10 of Kemp's poems to poet Laura Riding, who was living in Majorica with Robert Graves. Riding published some of them in her literary magazine, Epilogue III, which was the beginning of a friendship and collaboration between the couple. When Graves and Riding returned to England in 1936, it was Kemp who found them a car and a house, which they shared with the Kemps for a few months. Later the couples bought nearby homes in London, and continued a close association. After Graves returned to Majorca, Kemp visited him there during the 1950's, but their acquaintanceship lapsed into a sporadic correspondence.[1]
Kemp briefly flirted with communism during the 1930s, but renounced those views in his 1939 book, The Left Heresy (co-written with Riding).[1]
Kemp left his wife in the 1950s, and married Eunice Frost, a founding editor of Penguin Books, a marriage that also did not last.[1]
Kemp's relationship with Riding soured in the late 1980s; in a letter of the time, she accused him of being bitten by "the animus of poet-egotism". Robert Nye, who had praised Kemp's 1985 Collected Poems, and who had agreed to work with him on an anthology of 20th-century poetry, withdrew from the project and retracted his praise, apparently after communicating with Riding.[1]
Kemp later wrote a book on his relationship with Riding, which he delivered to a publisher just months before his death.[1]
Publications[]
Poetry[]
- Poems for Now. London: printed for the author, 1969.
- Poems as of Then. Ulverston, Cumbria, UK: printed for the author, 1972.
- Poems in Variety. Ulverston, Cumbria, UK: printed for the author, 1977.
- Verses for Heidi: An album of family verse. London: Regency, 1978.
- Collected Poems. Ulverston, Cumbria, UK: printed for the author, 1985.
- Poems for Erato. Crediton, Devon, UK: printed for the author, 1990.
- An Essay, and poems. Crediton, Devon, UK: printed for the author, 1993.
- Poems for Mnemosyne: Selected poems. printed for the author, 1993.
Non-fiction[]
- The Left Heresy in Literature and Life (with Laura Riding & others). London: Methuen, 1939.
- Relations with Riding. Crediton, Devon, UK: Cervisian Press, 1999.
Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[2]
See also[]
References[]
Fonds[]
- Papers of Harry Kemp at University of Exeter Archives
Notes[]
External links[]
- About
- Obituary: Harry Kemp, The Independent
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