Kenward Elmslie (1929–2022)  •  Miles Champion writes: The poetry community has lost one of its most loadbearing yet unobtrusive pillars: the librettist, poet, publisher and songwriter Kenward Elmslie died peacefully of natural causes at his home in Manhattan’s West Village on 29 June; he was ninety-three. Elmslie’s publications span forty-plus years, from Pavilions (Tibor de Nagy, 1961) to Agenda Melt (Adventures in Poetry, 2004). From the get-go, his poetry manifests a gloriously sui generis quality; skittish and vehement by turns, and as ordered as it is deranged, it gives the lie to the notion that abstract poetry doesn’t actually say anything. His play, City Junket, based on Henri Rousseau’s Une visite à l’exposition de 1899, was the first to be staged by the Eye and Ear Theater Company, in 1979, with sets by Red Grooms; his novel, The Orchid Stories, is one of the indelible prose works of the last fifty years.

A lifelong devotee of musicals and opera, Elmslie wrote the lyrics for Claibe Richardson’s cult classic The Grass Harp (based on Truman Capote’s novel) and the librettos for, among others, Ned Rorem’s Miss Julie and Jack Beeson’s The Sweet Bye and Bye and Lizzie Borden. His early song ‘Love-Wise’ was recorded by Nat King Cole in 1959. Lingoland, the revue he assembled in 2005 featuring his songs, poems and dialogues, was a life-affirming joy that offered far more than could reasonably be asked of an off-Broadway night out (look for it on CD, CDJAY2 1395).

For decades Elmslie divided his time between New York City and Calais (pronounced ‘callous’), Vermont. Elmslie’s partner and collaborator of thirty years, Joe Brainard, wrote I Remember in Elmslie’s Calais farmhouse, and Elmslie founded Z Press there, publishing books by John Ashbery, Edwin Denby, Barbara Guest and Harry Mathews, among others, as well as six issues of an annual magazine (Z through ZZZZZZ, 1973–78). An affable and entertaining – if eccentric – resident of the town, the dirt road he lived on was named Elmslie Road in the 1970s.

A Pulitzer heir – his grandfather was Joseph Pulitzer – Elmslie’s numerous charitable gifts to artists, writers, civil rights groups and community organisations were as generous as they were anonymous. He was larger than life, with a fine baritone singing voice. The mould for his like no longer exists, alas; he cannot and will not be replaced.

SONG

carnations
tangerines
let’s walk a little ways

and when the fruits are mushy
a hoverer
will give us a haven

pop art rose
impressionist potato flower
let’s walk a little ways

and when the plastic browns
a machinist
will coat us all with greensward

Portugal’s beloved radical daughter Ana Luísa Amaral, poet and translator of Dickinson and Shakespeare (1956–2022)  •  She was a poet of specifics, of motherhood, of ‘all the worlds that are in this world’ and, as a Portuguese obituarist wrote, of the diminutive that contains the universal. She also helped introduce gender studies in Portuguese universities. She died – untimely – of cancer and is survived by her daughter and her mother. Her poetry has been widely published in English, a third collection, World, due out next year. She was a wonderful performer, by heart, of her own and others’ poems, and her voice is preserved alongside her texts. Her translation of 300 of Emily Dickinson’s poems are said to be particularly accomplished. Her first collection was a substantial success and she was soon among the best-loved poets of modern Portugal. She received the Reina Sofía Prize for her work. In her last book, published earlier this year in a bilingual Portuguese/Spanish edition (she has a substantial readership in Spain), ‘her protagonists are a centipede which with difficulty scales the bathroom wall; the bee which “methodical and happy”, tastes the nectar of the flowers; or that particoloured magpie’.

She built on and strengthened the long link between Portuguese and British culture, teaching British and American Literature at the University of Oporto and responding to the poets of the eighteenth as well as the later, more popular centuries. The obituarist in El País speaks of how her sense of solidarity marked her life as it does her work – a solidarity which is not hectoring but particular. No wonder her work exists in fifteen languages beyond her own. Whether swatting a mosquito or braving the waves with Odysseus, writing about the experience of migrants or a recipe or a priest’s pain at some of the Bible scenes, her world is particularly alive.

A ‘Native Alien’ Poet, cricketer & novelist (1935–2022)  •  Zulfikar Ghose died in July at the age of eighty-seven. Born in India, he arrived in Britain in 1952, settling in London. The poet-to-be attended Keele University, reading English and Philosophy. He became a reckonable figure on the London poetry and critical scene, forming with experimental novelist B.S. Johnson and poet Anthony Smith a sub-set of ‘the Group’, metropolitan successors to ‘the Movement’. He received a Gregory Award for his poetry in 1963 and existed as a schoolmaster and freelance writer. Not least among his enthusiasms was cricket, about which he wrote for the Observer. He also reviewed books. His first book of poems came in 1964 (The Loss of India) and his autobiographical Confessions of a Native Alien the year after. He also wrote a dozen novels, several non-fiction books and six further collections of poetry. He abandoned the British in 1969 and thereafter taught creative writing in the United States. An initial one-year contract grew into a thirty-eight-year commitment.

Cuba’s long-heard voice, another radical (1923–2022)  • Fina García Marruz was ninety-nine years old when she died in Havana at the end of June, one of the long-serving poets of Latin America and specifically of Cuba, of several Cubas. She was not only a poet: she was an essayist and a critic of moment. She received the major literary awards of her own country, but also in 2011 the Lorca Prize of the City of Granada. In the same year she was awarded the Reina Sofía Prize, the supreme accolade.

The Casa de las Américas regretted the loss of ‘one of the most extraordinary poetic voices of Latin America’. It reminded readers that she was a founding member of the Origenes group that centred around the eponymous magazine (1944–56) and included Wilfredo Lam, José Lezama Lima and foreign contributors – Juan Ramón Jiménez, Aimé Césaire, Paul Valéry, Vicente Aleixandre, Albert Camus, Luis Cernuda, Paul Claudel,  Paul Éluard, Gabriela Mistral, Octavio Paz, Alfonso Reyes and Theodore Spencer among them. She taught at the University of Havana where she received awards for her essays and critical writing. She was a leading expert on the work of Cuba’s national poet José Martí and was part of the editorial team that produced his Obras Completas. Prensa Latina called her ‘one of the greatest voices not only of Cuban but of world poetry’, who had survived attempts from various quarters to silence and marginalise her voice. The president of Cuba added his voice to the chorus of praise and reminded the world that the North American blockade of Cuba was in its seventh decade, but the country continues and, in its unique way, thrives.

Joie de vivre and fantasy  •  Geoffrey Pawling writes: Tony Mitton, one of Britain’s most popular and versatile children’s poets, died in June this year aged 71.  As a Cambridge undergraduate he studied under J.H. Prynne, but ballad and song were so central to Mitton’s love of poetry that the work of more traditional contemporary poets, most of all Charles Causley, provided the bearings he needed.

Over the last thirty years Mitton’s poetry, published in colourful books of all shapes and sizes, has delighted very young listeners and readers with its fizzing wit and playfulness, while at least two collections of his poems for older children sit well with the classics of that genre. In Plum (1998) and Come into This Poem (2011) the traditional resources of poetry are deployed in a variety of forms – there is even a memorable villanelle – but also consort with the most contemporary idiom, as in ‘Txt PoM’. Then there is the range of subjects, as a run of just three poems from Plum suggest: ‘Nits’, ‘The Hag of Beara’, ‘Awakening’ (the Buddha’s meditation under the Bhodi tree). But above all Mitton’s poetry celebrates domestic life and the natural world. He could make even a garden snail glamorous, giving it the full Keatsian treatment (“Nigh­twriter”)

Among Mitton’s other notable works are his prize-winning Wayland, retelling the Norse legend in ballad form, and his novel Potter’s Boy. A number of his poems for young children have inspired musical accompaniment for performances by the City of Birmingham Symphony and the Hallé Orchestras, the latest of these collaborations being performed by the Hallé to altogether more than 2200 children at two concerts held only days after Mitton died. For the Hallé too he wrote the words for Goddess Gaia, Steve Pickett’s cantata for flute, harp, cello and narrator.  Words and music, the music of words, that kinship was very dear to Tony Mitton.

Lonesome Cowboy (1945–2022)  •  Baxter Black, the cowboy poet, a recognised voice on National Public Radio and a celebrated performer, has departed his home on the range. He reached the pinnacle of cowboy Parnassus, as grand marshal of the National Western Stock Show parade in Denver in 2009. He was commentator on the event for more than ten years. His New York Times obituarist Clay Risen described him as a writer and speaker ‘whose witty, big-hearted verse about cowpokes, feed lots and wide-open vistas elevated the tradition of Western doggerel to something of a folk art’. His widow Cindy Lou Black said he died of leukaemia. His death outed the fact that poetry is rife among cowboys: ‘more than 100 cowboy poetry festivals are held each year, and the peripatetic Mr. Black was often featured as the main event’. Clay Risen continues: ‘And, he said, cowboy poetry is fun. Forget intimations of immortality; Mr. Black’s poetry cracked wise about things like horse manure, the evils of vegetarianism and the advantages of artificial preservatives…’ Well-known, well-loved, he was also widely published, with over sixty books to his name. ‘I count myself very lucky that I get to be a part of the wonderful world of horse sweat, soft noses, close calls and twilight on the trail,’ he wrote. ‘I like living a life where a horse matters.’

Poetry as Panacea  •  When poets are elevated to prominent civic positions, they are invited to talk in sweeping generalities and platitudes. The new American Poet Laureate Ada Limón, the twenty-fourth writer to occupy that post, is a reckonable poet. From her new eyrie, she proposes poetry as panacea for all our problems. In July, asked, ‘what can poetry offer a divided country?’ she replied: ‘Yeah. I think that it’s really important to remember that even in this particularly hard moment, divided moment, poetry can really help us reclaim our humanity. And I think it’s important right now at a time when so many of us have been numbed to trauma, to grief, to chaos. And so many of us have had to compartmentalize in order to live our lives. And we’ve had to kind of forget, conveniently, that we are thinking, feeling, grieving, emotional beings. And I think through poetry, I think we can actually remember that on the other side of that is also contentment, joy, a little peace now and again, and that those are all part of the same spectrum. And without one, we don’t have the other. And I think poetry is the place where we can go to break open. But to have that experience, I really, truly believe helps us remember that we’re human. And reclaiming our humanity seems like it’s really essential right now.’

Addition and Subtraction  •  In June, the GCSE syllabus was redrawn to include poetry by Ilya Kaminsky, Louise Bennet-Coverley, Caleb Femi, Raymond Antrobus, Warsan Shire and Theresa Lola. This enhances the variety of poets on offer to GCSE candidates. They will no longer be required to grapple with Keats, Hardy, Owen, Larkin, Heaney or Sassoon. In the circumstances, quoting ‘Dockery and Son’ out of context (in the poet’s centenary year) seems apposite:

Why did he think adding meant increase?
To me it was dilution. Where do these
Innate assumptions come from? Not from what   
We think truest, or most want to do:
Those warp tight-shut, like doors.

Nadhim Zahawi, the then Education Secretary, called the decision ‘cultural vandalism’. ‘I will be speaking to the exam board to make this clear,’ he said. His time is over. Surely he might have acknowledged that greater diversity in the poetry offered to students should be welcomed. It is only sad that the OCR Exam Board did not opt for ‘dilution’, adding without subtraction; and that the talk was more about poems than poets. It is probably outrageous that ‘An Arundel Tomb’ and ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ have been binned: but what has been put in their place? The Board explained that it wanted to ‘replace some Victorian and 20th-century poems which have either become overfamiliar through the assessment process, or which have proved to have unexpected difficulties or seemed less accessible for students’. The GCSE anthology contains forty-five poems. fifteen were culled, fifteen were added. ‘Of the 15 poets whose work has been added to GCSE English literature, 14 are poets of colour. Six are Black women, one is of south Asian heritage. Our new poets also include disabled and LGBTQ+ voices.’

Rupi Kaur on Education  •  Rupi Kaur has not yet made it on to the GCSE or A-level syllabus (though her books have been banned from schools in Texas), but she has told her 4.5 million Instagram followers that the widely-reported plans to remove or reduce the English Literature and Creative Writing element in some universities is ‘horrible’ and made her feel ‘sad’. Her debut book sold eight million copies. She declared that studying English literature shaped what she did as a writer and she was unhappy that others might not be able to have the same experience at undergraduate level. The universities currently planning cuts and changes include Sheffield Hallam University, Roehampton and Wolverhampton. Kaur is currently on a world tour that takes in the United Kingdom. Speaking to Sky News, she said she finds readings energising: ‘I’m totally engaged and having conversations throughout the whole show, and that’s what makes performing so magical. It kind of just feels like a giant sleepover with all of your besties!’

Prizes Wane  •  In its 21 July editorial, the Bookseller spoke of the book trade’s anxiety as some of the major prizes are postponed or closed down. ‘Prize organisers are increasingly concerned by the difficulty of attracting sponsors in economically straitened times, with others worried books are not valued by wider society, influencing the decisions of potential corporate backers. This summer, the UK has seen a spate of worrying announcements from established prizes. In June, the Costa Book Awards were cancelled with no warning and no explanation. Within weeks, the Blue Peter Award was also scrapped. […] This was followed by warnings that the Sunday Times Short Story Award could be discontinued following the loss of Audible as a sponsor, and the announcement that the Desmond Elliott Prize will not run in ٢٠٢٣…’

Prizes won: Feltrinelli Poetry Prize 2022: €250,000  •  Michael Longley received one of the major European poetry prizes, the 2022 Feltrinelli International Prize for Poetry. Every five years the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome makes the award. Previous winners include W.H. Auden, Eugenio Montale and John Ashbery.

The Accademia dei Lincei accolade declares: ‘Longley is an extraordinary poet of landscape, particularly of the Irish West, which he observes with the delicate and passionate attention of an ecologist, and a tragic singer of Ireland and its dramatic history. But with his poetry he has also addressed the seduction, conquest, and fascination of love, as well as the shock of war in all ages, the tragedy of the Holocaust and of the gulags, and the themes of loss, grief and pity. For the extraordinary relevance of his themes and their cultural implications, as well as the very high stylistic quality of his oeuvre, the 2022 Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize for Poetry is awarded to Michael Longley.’

Longley will accept the prize at a ceremony at the Accademia in Rome in November. He has previously received the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Irish Times Poetry Now Award, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award and the Griffin International Prize.