BASIL BUNTING died in Hexham, Northumberland, on 17 April. He was as old as the century, having been born in Scotswood-on-Tyne in 1900. Brought up and educated as a member of the Society of Friends, he showed his allegiance to Quaker pacifist principles by taking pains to register for military service in 1918 just in time to serve a prison sentence as a conscientious objector. However, he served in the Armed Services in the Second World War. The inter-war years he had spent mostly as an impecunious expatriate in Paris, the Canary Islands, and the United States, and had published his earliest poems as Redimiculum Metellarum (Milan, 1930). After 1945 he lived again as an expatriate, this time in Iran whence, because of the tenor of his reports as Times correspondent, he was forced to repatriate himself at the age of 52, with his half-Persian family, to Newcastle. Unknown and making a penurious living in local journalism, Bunting was saved only in 1964, when the teen-age Newcastle poet Tom Pickard sought him out, persuaded him he had not been totally forgotten, and so launched him on the poem that was to be his masterpiece, Briggflatts (1965), a celebration of the Northumbrian heritage from which he had departed and to which he had more lately returned. The publication of Briggflatts by the admirable Fulcrum Press in London, along with Loquitur and The First Book of Odes, all in 1965, brought Bunting as much recognition in the U.K. as he was ever to get, signalized by an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Newcastle, and presidency of the Poetry Society (1972-76) and of Northern Arts (1973-76). But for years before he died Bunting's contribution to British poetry of this century-Cyril Connolly had called Briggflatts 'the finest long poem to have been published in England since Four Quartets'-was either overlooked or else treated as an anachronistic oddity. Fortunately Bunting to the end remained buoyantly cheerful and contemptuously uncomplaining. But the history of his reputation in his lifetime is a damning indictment of the British literary world. The crucial repudiation came in 1950 when his Poems (1950), published in Galveston, was turned down for Fabers by T.S.Eliot, even though it was Eliot-not, as rumour has it, Pound-to whom Bunting first served his poetic apprenticeship. Though Bunting sat at the feet of the Anglo-American masters Eliot and Pound, and made common cause with American peers-Louis Zukofsky, George Oppen and William Carlos Williams-he was always his own man-an English North-country man. As he always insisted, and as the sound-texture of his verse makes abundantly clear, his first allegiance was to other English North-country poets, especially Wordsworth. There is no excuse for the British failure to recognise this. It was typical that in the Times obituary on 19 April one of Bunting's last publications, Descant on Rawthey's Madrigal (1968), should have been described as a work in verse, whereas it is nothing of the kind. It is also typical that the description should have passed uncorrected.
       D.D.

J. V. CUNNINGHAM, the American poet and scholar, died on 30 March. Clive Wilmer contributes an appreciation of the man and his work in the Reports pages.

SIR THOMAS PARRY, who died in April at the age of 80, was a figure of central importance to Welsh literature. Among his many services he edited the work of Dafydd ap Gwilym, and he was responsible for the Oxford Book of Welsh Verse.

ENID McLEOD, whose work as a translator and whose activity in bringing together British and French writers were of considerable importance, died in April at the age of 88. She translated Supervielle, wrote biographies of Christine de Pisan and Charles of Orleans. Her work as British Council representative in Paris between 1954 and 1959 came at a time of important literary and cultural change which she monitored and in which she was personally involved.

The two American poets to follow Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson into the new POET'S CORNER at the Cathedral Church of St John the Divine in New York are Herman Melville and Edgar Allan Poe. The choice of Melville cannot have been without some controversy and is to be welcomed. Sadly, the first of the proposed annual 'Poet's Corner Cathedral Lectures', which was to have been given by J.V.Cunningham on Emily Dickinson, will not now take place.

MICHAEL HAMBURGER was awarded the European Poetry Translation Prize for his versions of Peter Huchel's poems published as The Garden of Theophrastus (Carcanet). He is the second recipient of this unusual prize which exists to celebrate the work of that most neglected of literary figures, the translator. Peter Levi and Edwin Morgan were the judges.

The German poet GUNTRAM VESPER (see PNR 40, 'Letter from Germany) has been awarded the Peter-Huchel-Preis 1985 for his collection of poems Die Inseln im Landmeer und neue Gedichte (1984). Vesper received the prize, given annually in recognition of 'a particularly remarkable contribution to the development of poetry in the German language', on 3 April, the anniversary of Huchel's birth in 1903, in Staufen/Breisgau where Huchel lived until his death in 1981. I.G.

On the night of 27 December 1585, PIERRE DE RONSARD died near Tours. Even despite the extent of the Hugo celebrations, Ronsard will not be neglected. The majority of the planned events will take place in Vendômois, his native place. But there will also be nombreuses manifestations in Touraine and Paris. Information is available from the Syndicat d'Initiative, Hôtel du Saillant, parc Ronsard, 41100 Vendôme.

SOUTH WEST REVIEW, one of the best literary magazines produced by a local arts association, is being closed, against the wishes of the literature panel. It would appear that the new Literature and Publications Officer at the South West Arts Association-and the not-quite-so-new director-want the association to be visible in a single magazine devoted to all the arts. South West Review is perhaps the last of the regional initiatives. Its demise raises a number of familiar issues, including the function of advisory panels, the artocrat as middleman, and so on.

Where would you learn that in 1655 one La Peyrere was imprisoned for doubting the historicity of Adam and Eve, and that when Scott Fitzgerald revised The Great Gatsby he concerned himself wholly with style rather than content?- At the second DURHAM ENGLISH STUDIES CONFERENCE, 15-18 April. These conferences are organised by research students in English and related disciplines at Durham, to enable people from different universities to meet informally and exchange ideas at the lowest possible cost. Some thirty students took part, and fourteen papers were read and discussed. The medievalists seemed least troubled by theory, but the relevance to our present discontents of their work on 'Women in the Irish Church' and 'Sacred Spaces in Anglo-Saxon England' was appreciable, and it was pointed out that when Anglo-Saxons unlocked their word-hoards what came out was not jargon. Relaxed discussion continued in the evenings. Information from Julie Briggs, English Department.

Theodore Zeldin in The French (Collins, 1983) projected his overall picture via a varied cast of characters, each representing some aspect of France today. This personalized method is also favoured by similar surveys on television, a tried and proven way of sugaring the pill of fact.

The originality of Faux Amis & Key Words by Philip Thody and Howard Evans (Athlone 1985) is that the knowledge conveyed about contemporary French life and culture comes as a bonus in what is otherwise a Dictionary of Confusables and Lookalikes. Instead of presenting us with a gallery of characters, its point of departure is a list of French words, and this works remarkably well for literary-minded readers, the changes in French society being reflected clearly in the French language itself. D.A.

Washington University in St Louis has mounted from its special library collection an exhibition on JAMES MERRILL and his work. The catalogue is available for $4.00 including postage. Write to Holly Hall, Head of Special Collections, University Libraries, Washington University in St Louis, Campus Box 1061, St Louis, Missouri 63130.

The Shrewsbury Poetry Festival opens on 14 September with a Poetry Book Fair. This year the participating poets include Roy Fisher, Gillian Clarke and Kit Wright, and events 'include everything from Victorian parlour games to jazz, with activities both on the street and under cover. Most excitingly, there's a community poem and a competition in which everyone can take part.' Most excitingly?