Basil Bunting, 1900-1985

Basil Bunting's poetry is deeply rooted in the landscape, history, language and culture of his native Northumbria, where he spent his youth, and to which he returned for the last three decades of his life. A close friend of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukovsky, he was associated in the thirties with the American Objectivist poets. In the fifties and early sixties his work suffered a period of eclipse, but his reputation was re-established by the publication in 1965 of his long poem Briggflatts .

Principal pamphlets and books of poems: Redimiculum matellarum (1930), Poems 1950 (1950), The spoils (1965), First book of odes (1965), Loquitur (1965), Briggflatts (1966), Two poems (1967), What the chairman told Tom (1967), Collected poems (1968, later eds with additional material 1970, 1978, 1985), Selected poems of Joseph Skipsey, ed. Basil Bunting (1976), Complete poems (1994).

Biographical details: 1900-1918 born 1 March 1900 at Scotswood on Tyne; childhood spent in North East England, except for education at Ackworth and Leighton Park schools (both Quaker establishments). 1918-1919 imprisoned as conscientious objector, World War I. 1920-1930 student at London School of Economics, briefly secretary to Harry Barnes, Newcastle M.P., and assistant in Paris to Ford Madox Ford on the Transatlantic review . Visited his mentor Ezra Pound at Rapallo and settled there briefly. Returned to England 1924, lectured at a Northumberland workingmen's college. Bohemian life in London literary circles, journalist, music critic for The outlook and The town crier . Retreated to rural Northumberland to write poetry, helped by patroness Margaret de Silver. 1930-1940 Married Marian Culver 1930 (2 daughters; 1 son, whom he never saw; wife left him 1937). Unsettled existence during the thirties in USA, at Rapallo with Pound, and in the Canaries. Sailed his boat and attended nautical school 1937-38. 1940-1952 War service in RAF (in Intelligence; served in Iran, thanks to knowledge of classical Persian acquired in order to read Firdausi to Pound) ending as Squadron Leader. Vice Consul Isfahan, Assistant Counsellor, British embassy, Teheran 1947-1948. Married Sima Alladallian 1948 (1 daughter, 1 son). Times correspondent in Teheran 1949-1952; expelled from Iran 1952. 1952-1985 Sub-editor Newcastle Daily Journal and later Newcastle Evening Chronicle 1954-1966. 1964 onwards, creative resurgence, stimulated by the young Newcastle poet, Tom Pickard. Northern Arts fellow in poetry at the Universities of Durham and Northumberland 1968-1970. President of the Poetry Society 1972. President of Northern Arts 1974-1977. Died 17 April 1985.

Durham University Library's Basil Bunting Poetry Archive was founded in 1987, with the purchase of the collection on Bunting formed by his biographer, Roger Guedalla. The Archive continues to grow, and is now the most extensive collection in the UK of Bunting's work and of material relating to him.

From the guide to the Basil Bunting Poetry Archive, 1920s-, (Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections)