Tom Raworth
| Tom Raworth | |
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Raworth in 2003 (photo by Gloria Graham)
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| Born | Thomas Moore Raworth 19 July 1938 Bexleyheath, Kent, England |
| Died | 8 February 2017 (aged 78) |
| Occupation | Poet, publisher, editor, teacher |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Poetry, essays, translation |
| Literary movement | British Poetry Revival, Late-Modernism |
| Website | |
| http://www.tomraworth.com | |
Thomas Moore "Tom" Raworth (19 July 1938 – 8 February 2017) was an English-Irish poet, publisher, editor, and teacher who published over 40 books of poetry and prose during his life. His work has been translated and published in many countries. Raworth was a key figure in the British Poetry Revival.
Raworth was born on 19 July 1938 in Bexleyheath, Kent, and grew up in Welling, the neighbouring town. His family maintained its strong Irish connections while he was growing up, something which would leave an impression on Raworth's sense of himself as a poet. His mother's family lived in the same house in Dublin as Seán O'Casey at the time that the playwright was working on Juno and the Paycock. When he was 52 years old, Raworth acquired an Irish passport.
He was educated at St. Stephen's Primary School, Welling, Kent (1943–1949); St Joseph's Academy, Blackheath, London S.E.3. (1949–1954); and at the University of Essex (1967–1970), where he earned a Master's degree in 1970. He left school at the age of sixteen and worked at a variety of jobs. According to Raworth:
Beginning in the early 1960s, with the magazine called Outburst, Raworth started his professional publishing career, when he published a number of British and American poets including Ed Dorn, Allen Ginsberg, and LeRoi Jones. He also founded Matrix Press at this time, publishing small books by Dorn, David Ball, , and others. In 1965, while working as an operator at the international telephone exchange, Raworth and Barry Hall set up Goliard Press, which published, amongst others, Charles Olson's first British collection. These ventures into publishing made an important contribution to a new found British interest in the New American Poetry movement of the 1960s.
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