Basil Bunting | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Basil Cheesman Bunting (1900-03-01)1 March 1900 Scotswood-on-Tyne, Northumberland, England |
| Died | 17 April 1985(1985-04-17) (aged 85) Hexham, Northumberland, England |
| Resting place | Quaker graveyard atBrigflatts,Sedbergh, Cumbria, England[1] |
| Occupation | Poet, military intelligence analyst, diplomat, journalist |
| Alma mater | London School of Economics (did not graduate) |
| Literary movement | Modernism |
| Notable works | "Briggflatts" (1966) |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 5 |
Basil Cheesman Bunting (1 March 1900 – 17 April 1985)[2] was a Britishmodernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication ofBriggflatts in 1966, generally regarded as one of the major achievements of the modernist tradition in English.[3][4] He had a lifelong interest in music that led him to emphasise the sonic qualities of poetry, particularly the importance of reading poetry aloud: he was an accomplished reader of his own work.[5]
Born into aQuaker family inScotswood-on-Tyne, nearNewcastle upon Tyne, he studied at two Quaker schools: from 1912 to 1916 atAckworth School in theWest Riding of Yorkshire and from 1916 to 1918 atLeighton Park School in Berkshire.[6] His Quaker education strongly influenced his pacifist opposition to theFirst World War, and in 1918 he was arrested as aconscientious objector having been refused recognition by the tribunals and refusing to comply with a notice of call-up. Handed over to the military, he was court-martialled for refusing to obey orders, and served a sentence of more than a year inWormwood Scrubs andWinchester prisons.[7] Bunting's friendLouis Zukofsky described him as a "conservative/anti-fascist/imperialist",[8] though Bunting himself listed the major influences on his artistic and personal outlook somewhat differently as "Jails and the sea, Quaker mysticism and socialist politics, a lasting unlucky passion, the slums of Lambeth and Hoxton ..."[9]
These events were to have an important role in his first major poem, "Villon" (1925). "Villon" was one of a rather rare set of complex structured poems that Bunting labelled "sonatas", thus underlining the sonic qualities of his verse and recalling his love of music. Other "sonatas" include "Attis: or, Something Missing", "Aus Dem Zweiten Reich", "The Well of Lycopolis", "The Spoils" and, finally, "Briggflatts". After his release from prison in 1919, traumatised by the time spent there, Bunting went to London, where he enrolled in theLondon School of Economics, and had his first contacts with journalists, social activists and Bohemia. Bunting was introduced to the works ofEzra Pound byNina Hamnett who lent him a copy ofHomage to Sextus Propertius.[10] The glamour of the cosmopolitan modernist examples of Nina Hamnett andMina Loy seems to have influenced Bunting in his later move from London to Paris.
After travelling in Northern Europe, Bunting left the London School of Economics without a degree and went to France. There, in 1923, he became friendly withEzra Pound, who years later would dedicate hisGuide to Kulchur (1938) to both Bunting andLouis Zukofsky, "strugglers in the desert". Between February and October 1927, Bunting wrote articles and reviews forThe Outlook, and then became its music critic until the magazine ceased publication in 1928.[11] Bunting's poetry began to show the influence of the friendship with Pound, whom he visited inRapallo, Italy, and later settled there with his family from 1931 to 1933. He was published in theObjectivist issue ofPoetry magazine, in theObjectivist Anthology, and in Pound'sActive Anthology.[citation needed]
In the 1930s, Bunting became interested in medieval Persian literature, studied the language to some degree, and began publishing adaptations of Persian poems byFerdowsi,Manuchehri,Sa’di,Hafez, andObayd Zakani; their use of sound patterning seems to have influenced his own.[12] During theSecond World War, Bunting served in British Military Intelligence inPersia. After the war, in 1948, he left government service to become the correspondent forThe Times. in Iran. He married aKurdish woman, Sima Alladadian, who was thirty years his junior. Because of his marriage to the underage girl, Bunting was fired from the British embassy.[clarification needed][13]
Back in Newcastle, he worked as a sub-editor (US copy editor) on theEvening Chronicle until his rediscovery during the 1960s by young poets, notablyTom Pickard andJonathan Williams, who were interested in working in themodernist tradition. In 1966, he published his major long poem,Briggflatts, named after the village inCumbria where he is now buried in the Quaker graveyard.[14][15]
In later life, he publishedAdvice to Young Poets, beginning "I SUGGEST / 1. Compose aloud; poetry is a sound."[5]
Bunting died in 1985 inHexham, Northumberland.[2]
The Basil Bunting Poetry Award and Young Person's Prize, administered byNewcastle University, are open internationally to any poet writing in English.[16][17]
Divided into five parts and noted for its intricate use of sound and resonances with medieval literature,[18]Briggflatts is an autobiographical long poem, looking back on teenage love and on Bunting's involvement in the high modernist period. In addition,Briggflatts can be read as a meditation on the limits of life and a celebration ofNorthumbrian culture and dialect, as symbolised by events and figures like the doomed Viking KingEric Bloodaxe. The criticCyril Connolly was among the first to recognise the poem's value, describing it as "the finest long poem to have been published in England sinceT. S. Eliot'sFour Quartets".
Basil Bunting sat in Northumberland for sculptorAlan Thornhill, with a resulting terracotta[19] (for bronze) in existence. The correspondence file relating to the Bunting portrait bust is held as part of the Thornhill Papers (2006:56) in the archive[20] of theHenry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and the terracotta remains in the collection of the artist. The 1973 portrait is displayed in the Burton (2014) biography of Bunting.[21]
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