Barry MacSweeney
Encyclopedia
Barry MacSweeney was an English poet and journalist
.
. He worked as a professional journalist throughout most of his life. He met poet Basil Bunting
when they were both working at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle in the mid-1960s, and formed part of a local group of poets including Tom Pickard
, Jon Silkin
and Jeremy Prynne
. He taught journalism and tutored in creative writing in the 1970s and worked as voluntary tutor in adult literacy in Newcastle in the late 1980s. Alcoholism, which he struggled with "from the age of sixteen" and related ill health led to his death in May 2000.
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
.
Life and work
Barry MacSweeney was born in Newcastle upon TyneNewcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
. He worked as a professional journalist throughout most of his life. He met poet Basil Bunting
Basil Bunting
Basil Cheesman Bunting was a significant British modernist poet whose reputation was established with the publication of Briggflatts in 1966. He had a lifelong interest in music that led him to emphasise the sonic qualities of poetry, particularly the importance of reading poetry aloud...
when they were both working at the Newcastle Evening Chronicle in the mid-1960s, and formed part of a local group of poets including Tom Pickard
Tom Pickard
Tom Pickard is a poet, radio and film maker who was an important initiator of the movement known as the British Poetry Revival....
, Jon Silkin
Jon Silkin
Jon Silkin was a British poet.-Early life:Jon Silkin was born in London, in a Jewish immigrant family and named after Jon Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga, and attended Wycliffe College and Dulwich College During the Second World War he was one of the children evacuated from London ; he remembered that...
and Jeremy Prynne
J. H. Prynne
Jeremy Halvard Prynne is a British poet closely associated with the British Poetry Revival.Prynne's early influences include Charles Olson and Donald Davie. His first book, Force of Circumstance and Other Poems was published in 1962; Prynne has excluded it from his canon...
. He taught journalism and tutored in creative writing in the 1970s and worked as voluntary tutor in adult literacy in Newcastle in the late 1980s. Alcoholism, which he struggled with "from the age of sixteen" and related ill health led to his death in May 2000.
Poetry
- The Boy from the Green Cabaret Tells of his Mother (1968)
- The Last Bud (1969)
- Joint Effort (1970) [with Pete Bland]
- Flames on the Beach at Viarregio (1970)
- Our Mutual Scarlet Boulevard (1971)
- 12 Poems and a Letter (1971) [with Elaine Randell]
- Just 22 and I Don't Mind Dyin': The Official Poetical Biography of Jim Morrison, Rock Idol (1971)
- Brother Wolf (1972)
- Fools Gold (1972)
- Five Odes (1972)
- Dance Steps (1972)
- Six Odes (1973)
- Fog Eye (1973)
- Black Torch (1973)
- Far Cliff Babylon (1978)
- Odes (1978)
- Blackbird [Book 2 of Black Torch] (1980)
- Starry Messenger (1980)
- Colonel B (1980)
- Ranter (1985)
- The Tempers of Hazard (1993; pulped same year) [with Thomas A. Clark and Chris Torrance]
- Hellhound Memos (1993)
- Pearl (1995)
- Zero Hero [with Finnbar's Lament and Blackbird] (1996)
- The Book of Demons (1997)
- Pearl in the Silver Morning (1999)
- Postcards from Hitler (1999)
- Sweet Advocate (1999)
- Wolf Tongue: Selected Poems 1965-2000 (2003)
- Horses in Boiling Blood: MacSweeney, Apollinaire: a collaboration, a celebration (2003)