James Kirkup
| James Kirkup | |
|---|---|
| Born | James Falconer Kirkup April 23, 1918 England |
| Died | May 10, 2009 (aged 91) Andorra |
| Occupation | Poet, writer |
| Genre | Poetry, fiction, journalism |
James Falconer Kirkup, FRSL (23 April 1918 – 10 May 2009) was an English poet, translator and travel writer. He wrote over 30 books, including autobiographies, novels and plays. He wrote under many pen-names including James Falconer, Jun Honda, Andrew James, Taeko Kawai, Felix Liston, Edward Raeburn, and Ivy B. Summerforest. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Kirkup was brought up in South Shields, and educated at South Shields Secondary School and Durham University. During World War II he was a conscientious objector, and worked for the Forestry Commission and on the land in the Yorkshire Dales and at the Lansbury Gate Farm, Clavering, Essex. He taught at The Downs School in Colwall, Malvern, where W.H. Auden had earlier been a master. Kirkup wrote his first book of poetry, The Drowned Sailor at the Downs, which was published in 1947. From 1950 to 1952 he was the first Gregory Poetry Fellow at Leeds University, making him the first resident university poet in the United Kingdom.
In 1952 he moved south with his partner Derek to Gloucestershire and became visiting poet at Bath Academy of Art for the next three years. Moving on from Bath, he taught in a London grammar school before leaving England in 1956 to live and work in Europe, the Americas and the Far East. In Japan, he found acceptance and appreciation of his work, and he settled there for 30 years, lecturing in English literature at several universities.
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