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US Poet Edward Byrne

Edward Byrne is a graduate of Brooklyn College, City University of New York (B.A., M.F.A.), and the University of Utah (Ph.D.). He has won a number of awards and fellowships, including an Academy of American Poets Award, the Donald G. Whiteside Award for Poetry, and a Utah Arts Council Award for Poetry.

His first full-length collection of poetry, Along the Dark Shore (BOA Editions), was a finalist for the Elliston Book Award. A chapbook-length collection of poems contained in The Return to Black and White (Tidy-Up Press) was selected by Library Journal as among "The Best of the Small Press Publications." Work in his third book of poems, Words Spoken, Words Unspoken (Chimney Hill Press), was awarded the Cape Rock Prize for Poetry in 1995. His fourth book of poems, East of Omaha, was nominated for a Midland Authors Award in 1999. His fifth collection of poems, Tidal Air, appeared from Pecan Grove Press in 2002. A sixth book of poetry, Seeded Light, is published by Turning Point Books (2010). His poems and articles of literary criticism also have been published in numerous literary journals or anthologies. In addition, he has written many film essays or movie reviews for newspapers and magazines.

He was born in New York City and currently resides with his wife and son in Valparaiso, Indiana. He is a professor of American literature and creative writing in the English Department at Valparaiso University, where he serves as the editor of Valparaiso Poetry Review.

PRAISE FOR EDWARD BYRNE'S POETRY COLLECTIONS:

"The world of Edward Byrne's poems is our own world viewed through the wrong end of a telescope: curiously small and urgent. But the minuteness of scope is deceptive.... Particulars explode into universality as through the action of a zoom lens." —John Ashbery

"Edward Byrne's poems are sinewy yet delicate, clear yet atmospheric; the precise character is unpredictable, but they are always moving, always engaging." —Mark Strand

"[Seeded Light] is memorial and social, scenic and intimate . . ." —David Baker

"[Seeded Light] offers abundant evidence of a mind’s alertness to the world of nature and to modern urban reality . . ." —Alfred Corn

"Reading a poem by Edward Byrne is like emerging at the top of a stadium ramp for a first glimpse of authentically green grass. Byrne's lines restore visibility to objects darkened by over- exposure." —David Lehman

"Byrne does what only the best poets can do...he makes connections which go beyond the landscape that can be described in spoken words, and he points to those truths which can never be fully captured in language." —Jill Pelåez Baumgartner, Christian Century

"Byrne's greatest strength: his command of crystalline images.... The action is essential. —ALA Booklist

"There's a genre of lyric poem in the romantic tradition still most alive in American poetry... [Byrne's poetry is] Wordsworthian in tone as well as mode." —Katharine Coles, Quarterly West

"Byrne writes a beautifully cadenced line and the musicality of his poems is often remarkable; indeed, they might be compared to nocturnes. . . . The work is mature, balanced, and poised." —Darlene Mathis-Eddy, Arts Indiana Magazine

"Completing [East of Omaha] one can't help but come to the conclusion that one has read a truly powerful and truly American book written by a poet who knows the pressures inherent in and necessary to the quiet range and ferocious despair that has driven much of Western culture and art." —Joel Peckham, Sun Dog: The Southeast Review

"[In Edward Byrne's poetry] the precision of detail and metaphor makes magic of an everyday occurrence." —Vince Gotera, Literary Magazine Review

"Learning to unlock experience and memory in the image is the way humans arrest the world, explore it, and feel its power. The gift of images, and the power to use them, is what [Byrne] gives." —Martin Walls, Sycamore Review

"Tidal Air, Edward Byrne's splendid book, is two poems in twelve parts each — first, about a son; last, about a father. The man we come to love as father and as son is the voice caught in the middle of heartache and natural, ecstatic joy. . .. Byrne regards the world as a gift; the son is 'one more unexpected / pleasure of nature' — delight made poignant by physical illness. Like James Wright and the millions of others of us, Byrne loves this earth, 'this rifted paradise.' Here, the bliss of being a father as well as son bumps always against risks and loss; 'the lush / . . . red tomatoes, green peppers // yellow corn' end up under 'remnants littering / the yard, windblown debris of the dead leaves // and broken bark,' serving 'as stark / reminders of how tenuous this tender life is.' The poems of Tidal Air know that loss is as natural as coastal erosion. Byrne understands, but mourns and sings the losses, especially of family, since 'a little less remains of the world we once knew.' The book's subtitle could well be 'Songs for the Young and Old' — a sustained elegy of joy and controlled heartbreak for us all." —Walt McDonald

"A famous sentence of Wordsworth comes to mind when reading Tidal Air, by Edward Byrne: The child is father of the man. The structure of this book is archetypal, its rhythm tidal, its two stories — the illness and recovery of a child, the death of his grandfather and the inevitable process of mourning — like all achieved poetry, profoundly recapitulate the structures of human life itself." —Jonathan Holden

"The title page of Edward Byrne's Tidal Air identifies it as 'A Diptych,' and indeed it is a work in two parts: one long poem about a man and his son and another about the same man and his father. But Byrne's collection would be more accurately labeled a triptych, with the third part being the poet himself. Byrne's voice and keen sense of image bind the sections of this book together as a powerful statement by a poet intensely aware of nature but even more intensely aware of the natural forces of the human heart." —R.G. Evans, The Literary Review

"There is a sense of mythic narrative throughout Tidal Air; despite the fact that both halves of the diptych center on an illness, this is not clinical illness poetry but rather rite of passage poetry . . . . Birds, all kinds of birds, feature in these poems, marking the incidents of remembered happiness as if reminding the reader that these moments are both irretrievable and permanent. The cormorants, kestrels, crows, sparrow hawks are like a chorus, setting the tone and communicating the interwoven light and dark of the experiences of parenthood—becoming and being a father, having one and losing him. Nothing can take away the past, the poems suggest, but neither can it be possessed; it is untouchable and immutable, foundation of present meaning and identity." —Janet McCann, Main Street Rag

"Tidal Air is a somber book filled with sadness of loss, the fear of losing, and the hope for better days. It does everything it sets out to do and more. Byrne . . . writes lines of such ease and charm that to read them is to feel the feathery touch of a pen on a thin sheet of paper, brushing along, drawing the words rather than writing them. This is true even though the subjects being written are harder-edged, desperate, tearing at what exists beyond the page . . .. Recommendation: When you buy this book, read it at least three times: once as a collection of individual poems, once as two long poems, and once as a complete piece exploring the polarities of a man's relationship to his father and son. Expect three different understandings to emerge. This book is a remarkable experiment in perspectives . . .. —Ace Boggess, The Adirondack Review

USA Poet Charles Sprague 1791 - 1875

Charles Sprague (October 26, 1791 – January 22, 1875) was an early American poet. He worked for 45 years for the State and Globe Banks and was often referred to as the "Banker Poet of Boston". His odes and prologues won several competitive prizes and were collected and published in 1841 as The Writings of Charles Sprague.

He was born in Boston on October 26, 1791. He was a descendant of some of America's founding fathers, including his father, Samuel Sprague (Participant in the Boston Tea Party and Revolutionary War), Richard Warren (Mayflower passenger) and the Reverend Peter Hobart and William Sprague of Hingham. He received a common-school education, beginning at age ten at the Franklin School in Boston. He was taught by Dr. Asa Bullard and Mr. Lemuel Shaw who later became Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. His formal education ended at thirteen when he was apprenticed to a dry goods merchant, Messrs Thayer and Hunt. Here he gained his first practical knowledge of business. Later he formed a co-partnership with William B. Collander in the grocery business. He married Elizabeth Rand in 1814 and had four children, two dying in childhood. In 1819 be began working for the State Bank as a teller and when the Globe Bank was established in 1824 was employed there as a cashier. He remained there, becoming an officer in the institution, until 1865 and was often referred to as the "Banker Poet" of Boston. He resigned his bank position, when at 73 years and growing infirm with age, he didn't want to undertake the labors of a new regime of banking under national laws. He enjoyed the comforts of home life, surrounded by his books, until January 22, 1875, when after a short illness he died at 84.

Poet

His first recognition for poetry came when he won a prize for the best prologue at the opening of the Park Theater in New York. His first printed efforts were published in the Centennial, Boston Gazette, and The Evening Gazette as early as 1811 – when he would have been 21 years old. Upon the occasion of the triumphal entry of Lafayette into Boston, in 1824, he wrote the inscription for an arch that hung over the streets of Boston. Many of Charles Sprague’s poems were delivered at public festivities — major, historical Boston events — including "Curiosity", delivered at the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University in 1829. This is his longest and most elaborate work. In the Salem Observer, August 29, 1829, it is noted that at the Commencement at Harvard an Honorary degree of Master of Arts was give to Mr. Charles Sprague, the poet. It goes on to state, "We are glad that the distributors of the literary honors of old Harvard are so discriminating in the selection of the candidates for their favors". This was quite an accomplishment as his formal education ended at thirteen and he was the epitome of a 'self-made' man. "Shakespeare Ode" was delivered at a Boston theatre in a pageant in honor of Shakespeare, in 1823; "Ode" was pronounced at the Centennial Celebration of the Settlement of Boston, 1830; "Triennial Ode" at the Massachusetts Charitable Asso 1818; "Fifty Years Ago" at the Fourth of July Celebration, and "Song" – at a festival in Faneuil Hall.

Legacy

His children, Charles James Sprague (who became Curator of botany at the Boston Society of Natural History) and Mary Anna Sprague both married and had children. The families creative and productive talents continued on through his grandsons. His namesake, Charles Sprague Pearce, was the noted expatriate artist who resided in Paris. He is best known or a series of lunettes, paintings that he was commissioned to do for the Library of Congress in 1896. Another grandson, William Houghton Sprague Pearce (WHS Pearce) worked for the New England Mutual Life Insurance company for over fifty years and painted local landscapes. He lived in Newton and often provided the artwork for the New England Mutual yearly calendar.

British Poet Andrew Motion 1952

Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL (born 26 October 1952) is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.

Motion was born in London and raised in Stisted near Braintree in Essex. After being sent, at the age of seven, to boarding school, was educated at Radley College. Here, in the sixth form, he encountered Mr Wray, an inspiring English teacher who introduced him to poetry – first Hardy, then Philip Larkin, W H Auden, Heaney, Hughes, Wordsworth and Keats. When he was 17 years old, his mother had a riding accident and spent the next nine years in and out of a coma before dying. Motion has said that he wrote to keep his memory of his mother alive and she was a muse of his work. In the years that followed, he read English at University College, Oxford, where he studied with W. H. Auden in weekly sessions. Motion says “I worshipped him the other side of idolatry and it was like spending an hour each week in the presence of God.” He won the university's Newdigate Prize and graduated with a first class degree.

Between 1976 and 1980, Motion taught English at the University of Hull and while there, at age 24, he had his first volume of poetry published. At Hull he met university Librarian and poet Philip Larkin. Motion was later appointed as one of Larkin's literary executors which would privilege Motion's role as his biographer following Larkin's death in 1985. In Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life, Motion says that at no time during their nine year friendship did they discuss writing his biography and it was Larkin's long time companion Monica Jones who requested it. He reports how, as executor, he rescued many of Larkin's papers from imminent destruction following his friend's death. His 1993 biography of Larkin, which won the Whitbread Prize for Biography, was responsible for bringing about a substantial revision of Larkin's reputation.

Motion was Editorial Director and Poetry Editor at Chatto & Windus (1983–89), he edited the Poetry Society's Poetry Review from 1980–1982 and succeeded Malcolm Bradbury as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.[3] In 2003, he became Professor of Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

In 2011 he took part in Jamie's Dream School.

Twice married, he has two sons and one daughter and lives in Islington, north London.

Works

Motion has said of himself: ‘My wish to write a poem is inseparable from my wish to explain something to myself’. His work combines lyrical and narrative aspects in a 'postmodern-romantic sensibility'.His an author's statement, Motion describes further the intention of his work:

My poems are the product of a relationship between a side of my mind which is conscious, alert, educated and manipulative, and a side which is as murky as a primaeval swamp. I can't predict when this relationship will flower. If I try to goad it into existence I merely engage with one side of my mind or the other, and the poem suffers. I want my writing to be as clear as water. No ornate language; very few obvious tricks. I want readers to be able to see all the way down through its surfaces into the swamp. I want them to feel they're in a world they thought they knew, but which turns out to be stranger, more charged, more disturbed than they realised. In truth, creating this world is a more theatrical operation than the writing admits, and it's this discretion about strong feeling, and strong feeling itself, which keeps drawing me back to the writers I most admire: Wordsworth, Edward Thomas, Philip Larkin.

The Independent describes the stalwart poet as the "charming and tireless defender of the art form". Motion has won the Arvon Prize, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, Eric Gregory Award, Whitbread Prize for Biography and the Dylan Thomas Prize.

He will also be partaking in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six where he has written a piece based upon a chapter of the King James Bible

Poet laureate

Photo of the poem "What if" taken on Howard Street, Sheffield(2007)

Motion was appointed Poet Laureate on 1 May 1999, following the death of Ted Hughes, the previous incumbent. The Nobel Prize-winning Northern Irish poet and translator Seamus Heaney had ruled himself out for the post. Breaking with the tradition of the laureate retaining the post for life, Motion stipulated that he would stay for only ten years. The yearly stipend of £200 was increased to £5,000 and he received the customary butt of sack.

He wanted to write "poems about things in the news, and commissions from people or organisations involved with ordinary life," rather than be seen a 'courtier'. So, he wrote "for the TUC about liberty, about homelessness for the Salvation Army, about bullying for ChildLine, about the foot and mouth outbreak for the Today programme, about the Paddington rail disaster, the 11 September attacks and Harry Patch for the BBC, and more recently about shell shock for the charity Combat Stress, and climate change for the song cycle I've finished for Cambridge University with Peter Maxwell Davies." In 2003, Motion wrote Regime change, a poem in protest at Invasion of Iraq from the point of view of Death walking the streets during the conflict, and in 2005, Spring Wedding in honour of the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker Bowles. Commissioned to write in the honour of 109 year old Harry Patch, the last surviving 'Tommy' to have fought in World War I, Motion composed a five part poem, read and received by Patch at the Bishop's Palace in Wells in 2008. As laureate, he also founded the Poetry Archive an on-line library of historic and contemporary recordings of poets reciting their own work.

Motion remarked that he found some of the duties attendant to the post of poet laureate difficult and onerous and that the appointment had been "very, very damaging to [his] work". The appointment of Motion met with criticism from some quarters. As he prepared to stand down from the job, Motion published an article in The Guardian which concluded, "To have had 10 years working as laureate has been remarkable. Sometimes it's been remarkably difficult, the laureate has to take a lot of flak, one way or another. More often it has been remarkably fulfilling. I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I'm giving it up – especially since I mean to continue working for poetry." Motion spent his last day as Poet Laureate holding a creative writing class at his alma mater, Radley College, before giving a poetry reading and thanking Peter Way, the man who taught him English at Radley, for making him who he was. Carol Ann Duffy succeeded him as Poet Laureate on 1 May 2009.

Post Laureateship

He continues Chairman of the Arts Council of England's Literature Panel (appointed 1996) and is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Since July 2009, Motion has been Chairman of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) appointed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. He is also a Vice President of the Friends of the British Library, a charity which provides funding support to the British Library. He was knighted in the 2009 Queen's Birthday Honours list. He has been a member of English Heritage's Blue Plaques Panel since 2008.

Motion was selected as jury chair for the Man Booker Prize 2010 and in March 2010, he announced that he was working with publishers Jonathan Cape on a sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. Entitled Return to Treasure Island, the story is set a generation on from the original book and it is expected to be published in 2012. In July 2010, Motion returned to Kingston-upon-Hull for the annual Humber Mouth literature festival and taking part in the Larkin 25 festival commemorating the 25th anniversary of Philip Larkin's death. In his capacity as Larkin's biographer and as a former lecturer in English at the University of Hull, Motion named an East Yorkshire Motor Services bus Philip Larkin.

On 24 February 2011 it was announced that Motion's debut play Incoming about the war in Afghanistan would premiere at the High Tides Festival in Halesworth Suffolk on 1 May 2011.

Motion also featured in Jamie's Dream School in 2011 as the Poetry teacher

Selected honours and awards

  • 1975: won the Newdigate prize for Oxford undergraduate poetry
  • 1976: Eric Gregory Award
  • 1981: wins Arvon Foundation's International Poetry Competition with The Letter
  • 1984: John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Dangerous Play: Poems 1974–1984
  • 1986: Somerset Maugham Award for The Lamberts
  • 1987: Dylan Thomas Prize for Natural Causes
  • 1999: appointed Poet Laureate for ten years
  • 1994: Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life wins the Whitbread Prize for Biography
  • 2009: Knighthood

Selected collected works

Poetry

  • 1972: Goodnestone: a sequence. Workshop Press
  • 1976: Inland. Cygnet Press
  • 1977: The Pleasure Steamers. Sycamore Press
  • 1981: Independence. Salamander Press
  • 1983: Secret Narratives. Salamander Press
  • 1984: Dangerous Play: Poems 1974-1984. Salamander Press / Penguin
  • 1987: Natural Causes. Chatto & Windus
  • 1988: Two Poems. Words Ltd
  • 1991: Love in a Life. Faber and Faber
  • 1994: The Price of Everything. Faber and Faber
  • 1997: Salt Water'.' Faber and Faber
  • 1998: Selected Poems 1976–1997. Faber and Faber
  • 2001: A Long Story. The Old School Press
  • 2002: Public Property. Faber and Faber
  • 2009: The Cinder Path. Faber and Faber

Criticism

  • 1980: The Poetry of Edward Thomas. Routledge & Kegan Paul
  • 1982: Philip Larkin. (Contemporary Writers series) Methuen
  • 1986: Elizabeth Bishop. (Chatterton Lectures on an English Poet)
  • 1998: Sarah Raphael: Strip!. Marlborough Fine Art (London)
  • 2008: Ways of Life: On Places, Painters and Poets. Faber and Faber

Biography and memoir

  • 1986: The Lamberts: George, Constant and Kit. Chatto & Windus
  • 1993: Philip Larkin: A Writer's Life. Faber and Faber
  • 1997: Keats: A Biography. Faber and Faber
  • 2006: In the Blood: A Memoir of my Childhood. Faber and Faber

Fiction

  • 1989: The Pale Companion. Penguin
  • 1991: Famous for the Creatures. Viking
  • 2003: The Invention of Dr Cake. Faber and Faber
  • 2000: Wainewright the Poisoner: The Confessions of Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (biographical novel)

Edited works, introductions, and forwards

  • 1981: Selected Poems: William Barnes. Penguin Classics
  • 1982: The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry with Blake Morrison. Penguin
  • 1994: Thomas Hardy: Selected Poems. Dent
  • 1993: New Writing 2 (With Malcolm Bradbury). Minerva in association with the British Council
  • 1994: New Writing 3 (With Candice Rodd). Minerva in association with the British Council
  • 1997: Penguin Modern Poets: Volume 11 with Michael Donaghy and Hugo Williams. Penguin
  • 1998: Take 20: New Writing. University of East Anglia
  • 1999: Verses of the Poets Laureate: From John Dryden to Andrew Motion. With Hilary Laurie. Orion.
  • 1999: Babel: New Writing by the University of East Anglia's MA Writers. University of East Anglia.
  • 2001: Firsthand: The New Anthology of Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. University of East Anglia
  • 2002: Paper Scissors Stone: New Writing from the MA in Creative Writing at UEA. University of East Anglia.
  • 2001: The Creative Writing Coursebook: Forty Authors Share Advice and Exercises for Fiction & Poetry. With Julia Bell. Macmillan
  • 2000: John Keats: Poems Selected by Andrew Motion. Faber and Faber
  • 2001: Here to Eternity: An Anthology of Poetry. Faber and Faber
  • 2002: The Mays Literary Anthology; Guest editor. Varsity Publications
  • 2003: 101 Poems Against War Faber and Faber (Afterword)
  • 2003: First World War Poems. Faber and Faber
  • 2006: Collins Rhyming Dictionary. Collins
  • 2007: Bedford Square 2: New Writing from the Royal Holloway Creative Writing Programme. John Murray Ltd.