Jon Stallworthy

Jon Stallworthy. Courtesy The Poetry Archive.

Jon (Howie) Stallworthy (born 18 January 1935) FBA FRSL is an English poet and literary critic.

Life

Stallworthy was born in London, England. His parents, John Arthur and Margaret Stallworthy, were from New Zealand, and had moved to England in 1934.

Stallworthy started writing poems when he was only 7 years old. He was educated at the Dragon School, Rugby School and at Magdalen College, Oxford.

He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Oxford, and a fellow and (twice) acting president of Wolfson College.

His works include 7 volumes of poetry, and biographies of Wilfred Owen and Louis MacNeice. He has edited several anthologies, and is particularly known for his work on War poetry.

Writing

While researching the local history of New Zealand Stallworthy discovered an obscure volume entitled Early Northern Wairoa written by his great-grandfather, John Stallworthy (1854-1923), in 1916. From this book he learned that his great-great-grandfather, George Stallworthy (1809-1859), had left his birthplace of Preston Bissett in Buckinghamshire, England, for the Marquesas as a missionary. This discovery led in turn to him finding family-related letters in the archives of the London Missionary Society. Stallworthy's book A Familiar Tree (Oxford University Press, 1978) is a collection of poetry inspired by events depicted in these documents.

Singing School is an autobiography which emphasises Stallworthy's development as a poet.

Stallworthy wrote a short summary of war poetry in the introductory chapter to the Oxford Book of War Poetry (1984).

Recognition

At Oxford, Stallworthy won the Newdigate prize.

Publications

Poetry

• The Earthly Paradise: The Newdigate Prize Poem, 1958. Oxford, UK: A.T. Broome & Son, 1958.
• The Astronomy of Love. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1961.
• Out of Bounds. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1963.
• A Day in the City. Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 1967.
• The Almond Tree. London: Turret Books, 1967.
• Root and Branch. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.
• Positives. Dublin: Dolmen Press, 1969.
• A Dinner of Herbs. Exeter, UK: Rougemont Press, 1971.
• Hand in Hand. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
• The Apple Barrel: Selected poems 1955-63. London & New York: Oxford University Press, 1974.
• A Familiar Tree (drawings by David Gentleman). New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN 0-19-520050-0
• The Anzac Sonata: New and selected poems, by Jon Stallworthy. London: Chatto & Windus / New York: Norton, 1986. ISBN 0-393-02449-0
• The Guest from the Future. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1995. ISBN 1-85754-132-4
• Rounding the Horn: Collected poems. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 1998. ISBN 1-85754-163-4
• Skyhorse. Oxford, UK: Thumbscrew, 2002.
• Body Language. Manchester, UK: Carcanet Press, 2004. ISBN 1-85754-746-2
• Way Poet. Greville, 2009.

Non-fiction

• Between the Lines: Yeats's poetry in the making. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.
• Vision and Revision in Yeat's Last Poems. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
• Poets of the First World War. London: Oxford University Press, 1974.
• Wilfred Owen. London: Oxford University Press, 1974. ISBN 0-19-211719-X
• Louis MacNeice. New York: Norton, 1995. ISBN 0-393-03776-2
• Singing School: The Making of a Poet. London: John Murray, 1998. ISBN 0-7195-5715-1
• War and Poetry. Cheltenham, UK: Cyder Press, 2005.

Translated

• Five Centuries of Polish Poetry, 1450-1970 by Jerzy Peterkiewicz and Burns Singer; 2nd edition with new poems translated in collaboration with Jon Stallworthy. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1970) ISBN 0-19-211298-8
• Alexander Blok, The Twelve, and other poems (translated from Russian by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France). New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.
• Boris Pasternak, Selected Poems (translated by Jon Stallworthy and Peter France). New York: Norton, 1983. ISBN 0-393-01819-9

Edited

• Yeats: Last poems, a casebook. London: Macmillan, 1968.
• A Book of Love Poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1974, 1986.
• The Penguin Book of Love Poetry. Harmondsworth, UK, & New York: Penguin Books, 1976.
  • The New Penguin Book of Love Poetry. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
• Wilfred Owen, *The Complete Poems and Fragments. (2 volumes), London: Chatto & Windus / Hogarth Press, 1983.
  • Volume 1: The poems.
  • Volume 2: The manuscripts of the poems and fragments
  • (1 volume), New York & London: Norton, 1984. ISBN 0-393-01830-X
• The Oxford Book of War Poetry (chosen and edited by Jon Stallworthy). Oxford, UK, & New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. ISBN 0-19-214125-2
• Wilfred Owen, The Poems of Wilfred Owen. New York: Norton, 1986.
• First Lines: Poems written in youth, from Herbert to Heaney. Oxford, UK, & New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.
• Henry Reed, Collected Poems. Oxford, UK, & New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
• The War Poems of Wilfred Owen. London: Chatto & Windus, 1994.
• The Norton Anthology of English Literature: Volume 2C, The Twentieth Century (edited by Jon Stallworthy; M.H. Abrams, general editor). (New York: Norton, 2000. ISBN 0-393-97570-3
• Great Poets of World War I: Poetry from the great war. New York: Carroll and Graf, 2002. ISBN 0-7867-1098-5
• Anthem for Doomed Youth: Twelve soldier-poets of the First World War. London: Constable, 2002.
• Survivors' Songs: From Malden to the Somme. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

A Poem about Poems about Vietnam by Jon Stallworthy

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets
• List of literary critics

References

• Stallworthy, Jon. A Familiar Tree. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Book liner notes and "The Bare Bones of the Tree", 80.

External links

Poems

• Jon Stallworthy b. 1935 at the Poetry Foundation.
• Stallworthy, Jon (5 poems) at Representative Poetry Online.

Audio / video

• Jon Stallworthy at The Poetry Archive

Books

• Jon Stallworthy at Amazon.com