X (magazine) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

X, A Quarterly Review was a British arts review published in London which ran for seven issues between 1959-1962. It was founded and co-edited by Patrick Swift

Patrick Swift

Patrick Swift was an artist born in Dublin, Ireland. Patrick Swift was a painter and key cultural figure in Dublin and London before moving to the Algarve in southern Portugal, where he is buried in the town of Porches...

and David Wright

David Wright (poet)

David John Murray Wright was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet".-Biography:Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing....

. X, named after its dictionary definition ‘the unknown quantity’, was launched to give a platform for the individual vision and to promote artists who were unknown or unfashionable.

Artists involved with X

X promoted and obtained contributions from many leading artists of that period including Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach

Frank Auerbach

Frank Helmut Auerbach is a painter born in Germany although he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947.-Biography:Auerbach was born in Berlin, the son of Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist...

, Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...

, Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud

Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...

, Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry

Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...

, Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

, Robert Pinget

Robert Pinget

Robert Pinget was a major avant-garde French writer, born in Switzerland, who wrote several novels and other prose pieces that drew comparison to Beckett and other major Modernist writers...

, Patrick Kavanagh

Patrick Kavanagh

Patrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger...

, Michael Andrews

Michael Andrews (artist)

Michael Andrews was a British painter.-Life and work:Michael Andrews was born in Norwich, England, the second child of Thomas Victor Andrews and his wife Gertrude Emma Green. He completed his two years' National service between 1947 and 1949, nineteen months of which was spent in Egypt...

, Robert Graves

Robert Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

, Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith

Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith was an English poet and novelist.-Life:Stevie Smith, born Florence Margaret Smith in Kingston upon Hull, was the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith. Contemporary Women Poets...

, Ghika

Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas

Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas was a leading Greek painter, sculptor, engraver, iconographer, writer and academic...

, René Daumal

René Daumal

René Daumal was a French spiritual para-surrealist writer and poet. He was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France....

, David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

, John McGahern

John McGahern

John McGahern was one of the most important Irish authors of the latter half of the twentieth century. Before his death in 2006 he was hailed as "the greatest living Irish novelist" by The Observer.-Life:...

, George Barker

George Barker (poet)

George Granville Barker was an English poet and author.-Life and work:Barker was born in Loughton, near Epping Forest in Essex, England, elder brother of Kit Barker [painter] George Barker was raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school...

, Anthony Cronin

Anthony Cronin

Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

, Craigie Aitchison

Craigie Aitchison (painter)

Craigie Aitchison, RA, CBE was a Scottish painter. He was known for his many paintings of the Crucifixion, one of which hangs behind the altar in the chapter house of Liverpool Cathedral.-Education:...

, David Bomberg

David Bomberg

David Garshen Bomberg was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson and Dora Carrington...

, John Heath-Stubbs

John Heath-Stubbs

John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs OBE was an English poet and translator, known for his verse influenced by classical myths, and the long Arthurian poem Artorius .- Biography :...

, Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...

, Brian Higgins

Brian Higgins (poet)

Brian Higgins Poet, mathematician and professional rugby player.‘Born at Batley in 1930, bored at Bradford in 1940, in 1950 he had an affair with the gamma function. He was educated in 1960 at the "York Minster", Soho.’...

, William Golding

William Golding

Sir William Gerald Golding was a British novelist, poet, playwright and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate, best known for his novel Lord of the Flies...

, Roberts MacBryde

Robert MacBryde

Robert MacBryde was a Scottish still-life and figure painter and a theatre set designer.MacBryde was born in Maybole and worked in a factory for 5 years after leaving school. He studied art at Glasgow School of Art from 1932 to 1937...

and Colquhoun

Robert Colquhoun

Robert Colquhoun was a Scottish painter, printmaker and theatre set designer.Colquhoun was born in Kilmarnock and was educated at Kilmarnock Academy...

, Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes

Edward James Hughes OM , more commonly known as Ted Hughes, was an English poet and children's writer. Critics routinely rank him as one of the best poets of his generation. Hughes was British Poet Laureate from 1984 until his death.Hughes was married to American poet Sylvia Plath, from 1956 until...

, Philip Martin, Noel Stock, Robert Nye

Robert Nye

Robert Nye FRSL is an English poet who has also written novels and plays as well as stories for children. His bestselling novel Falstaff published in 1976 was described by Michael Ratcliffe as 'one of the most ambitious and seductive novels of the decade,' and went on to win both The Hawthornden...

, Timothy Behrens

Timothy Behrens

Timothy Behrens is a British painter resident in Spain.Behrens was a student at the Slade School of Fine Art and formed part of the tightly knit group of artists and intellectuals who frequented the Colony Room , the infamous Soho drinking club where Lucian Freud and...

, André Masson

André Masson

André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...

, Cliff Ashby

Cliff Ashby (poet)

Cliff Ashby Probably the most powerful, spare poet of his generation; recognition of his genius cannot be much longer delayed.- Guide to World Literatue, 1975...

, Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

, Martin Gerard, Charles-Albert Cingria, Vernon Watkins

Vernon Watkins

Vernon Phillips Watkins , was a British poet, and a translator and painter. He was a close friend of Dylan Thomas, who described him as "the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English"....

, Thomas Blackburn, Martin Seymour-Smith

Martin Seymour-Smith

Martin Roger Seymour-Smith was a British poet, literary critic, biographer and astrologer.Seymour-Smith was born in London and educated at Oxford University where he was editor of Isis...

, Boris Pasternak

Boris Pasternak

Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

, James Lovell, Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...

, Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill is an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation...

, Philippe Jaccottet

Philippe Jaccottet

Philippe Jaccottet is a poet and translator who publishes in French.After completing his studies in Lausanne, he lived several years in Paris. In 1953, came to live in the town of Grignan in Provence...

, Dom Moraes

Dom Moraes

Dominic Francis Moraes , popularly known as Dom Moraes, was a Goan writer, poet and columnist. He published nearly 30 books.-Early life:...

, H.A. Gomperts, Jules Supervielle

Jules Supervielle

Jules Supervielle was a French poet and writer born in Uruguay.Jules Supervielle always kept away from Surrealism which was dominant in the first half of the twentieth century...

, Charles Marowitz

Charles Marowitz

Charles Marowitz is an American critic, theatre director, and playwright who has been a regular columnist on Swans Commentary—a cultural-political bi-weekly—since 2004...

, O. V. de L. Milosz

Oscar Milosz

Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz was a French-Lithuanian writer and representative of Lithuania at the League of Nations. His literary work was concerned with symbols and associations. A recluse, his poems were vibrant and tormented, concerned with love, loneliness and anger. Milosz was primarily...

, Dannie Abse

Dannie Abse

Daniel Abse, better known as Dannie Abse , is a Welsh poet.-Early years:Abse was born in Cardiff, Wales to a Jewish family. He is the younger brother of politician and reformer Leo Abse and the eminent psychoanalyst, Wilfred Abse...

, Georges Duthuit, Aidan Higgins

Aidan Higgins

-Life:His upbringing in a landed Catholic family in Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, provided material for his first experimental novel, Langrishe, Go Down...

, Yves Bonnefoy

Yves Bonnefoy

Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....

, C. H. Sisson

C. H. Sisson

Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

History

David Wright's introduction to An Anthology from X: "X, a quarterly review of literature and the arts, flourished, or at any rate existed, between the years 1959 and 1962. It took its name from the algebraic symbol for the unknown quantity- ‘incalculable or mysterious fact or influence’ as the Concise Oxford Dictionary defines it. Neither manifesto nor editorial introduced the first number: its contents were the manifesto...Our benefactor was Michael Berry

Michael Berry, Baron Hartwell

William Michael Berry, 3rd Viscount Camrose and Baron Hartwell MBE was a newspaper proprietor and journalist.Michael Berry was the second son of the 1st Viscount Camrose. He succeeded his brother Seymour Berry, 2nd Viscount Camrose as Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph...

[1911-2001], now Lord Hartwell, the owner of the Daily Telegraph. He undertook to guarantee the first four volumes of X, and proved an ideal backer- he never interfered. Indeed, I never even met him...Apart from Swift and myself there was no other staff, for we had determined to cut out all unnecessary expenses...The first number of X was carefully planned, and well received. Philip Toynbee

Philip Toynbee

Theodore Philip Toynbee was a British writer and communist. He wrote experimental novels, and distinctive verse novels, one of which was an epic called Pantaloon, a work in several volumes, only some of which are published...

hailed it in the Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

as "an event, if only because a literary magazine of this kind has not existed for a long time. The admirable impression of a review devoted to attacking both the corruptions of an established avant-garde and the dreary 'retrenchments' of the age is reinforced by every article and poem which appear here." In a leading article the Times Literary Supplement

The Times Literary Supplement

The Times Literary Supplement is a weekly literary review published in London by News International, a subsidiary of News Corporation.-History:...

was also laudatory: 'A concern for 'rethinking' about the nature of literary and artistic experience is apparent throughout the pages of X, and gives the whole of the first issue a unity uncommon among periodicals now'... About 3,000 of the first number were sold, and the circulation remained at this figure, more or less, until its demise. Much of its impact was due to the layout that Patrick Swift designed, and to its unusual format, which was in fact determined by the dimensions of a menu card in a caff off Victoria Station where we happened to be having a cup of coffee...Swift was, of course, responsible for the art side of the magazine. These were the boom years of abstract art. Swift, twenty years ahead of his time, launched a series of penetrating attacks on the cult… as well as promoting the work of then unknown or unfashionable figurative painters, among them the young Frank Auerbach

Frank Auerbach

, Michael Andrews

Michael Andrews (artist)

, and Craigie Atchison

Craigie Aitchison (painter)

, and such as-yet uncannonized painters as Lucian Freud

Lucian Freud

Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...

, Francis Bacon, and the forgotten David Bomberg

David Bomberg

.[To say nothing of the continentals like Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka

Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...

, Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti

, André Masson

André Masson

] Examples of their work were reproduced; more importantly, it was Swift's idea that the artist should speak for themselves, which was achieved either by transcribing their tape-recorded conversation (not 'interviews', wherein questions loaded with some obtuse interogator's 'impercipience' tend to darken council), or by publishing their notes. Swifts’s unearthing and editing of David Bomberg’s outspoken and apocalyptic pensées, scattered about his miscellaneous papers, was an outstanding contribution." David Wright in an interview with Poetry Nation: "I received a letter from the Irish painter Patrick Swift [they had first met in Soho in 1953] inviting me to come in with him to edit a new quarterly. The backing was to come via the remarkable Mrs St John Hutchinson. We called the magazine X, after its dictionary definition ‘the unknown quantity’. The actual backer I was never to meet, but through his generosity X was able to pay contributors on the scale of Encounter. The first number came out at the end of 1959, the seventh and last in 1962. We were out to provide a platform for the individual vision, not accepted avant-gardisme or second-hand attitudes. While the list of contributors remained international, from among the native English ‘X’ managed to recruit at least [three] new poets who certainly would not have been elsewhere given a hearing [ Brian Higgins

Brian Higgins (poet)

, C. H. Sisson

C. H. Sisson

Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

and Cliff Ashby

Cliff Ashby (poet)

Cliff Ashby Probably the most powerful, spare poet of his generation; recognition of his genius cannot be much longer delayed.- Guide to World Literatue, 1975...

, ]."

PN Review
P. N. Review
Launched as Poetry Nation, a twice-yearly hardback, in 1973, PN Review - now an A4 paperback - began quarterly publication in 1976 and has appeared six times a year since 1981...

: Apart from providing a platform for such then-neglected poets as Patrick Kavanagh

Patrick Kavanagh

, George Barker

George Barker (poet)

, Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith

and Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid

, its editors hoped - though not too confidently - to uncover some of the 'unknown quantities' that they knew might be finding it difficult to get into print, either because their ideas and attitudes were not among those currently received, or their verse and prose not cut to the fashion of the day. In this respect the magazine did pretty well, considering its short life... Two novelists - John McGahern and Aidan Higgins

Aidan Higgins

-Life:His upbringing in a landed Catholic family in Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, provided material for his first experimental novel, Langrishe, Go Down...

- and several now well-known painters, including Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, and Craigie Aitchison, were first featured in its pages...But the best justification of the magazine, and of its editors' ambitions, was the discovery, or rather the recognition, of two or three authentic but unpublished - and at that time apparently unpublishable - poets...

CJ Fox (Canadian journalist and critic): "The contents of the seven issues of X that preceded its demise in 1962 vividly reflect the rebellious spirit that animated Swift's commentaries. From the older generation, Graves

Robert Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

was enlisted to flay what he called the official 'trades union' of literature... From Barker

George Barker (poet)

came fighting verse excoriating the 'rigor leavis' of the academies while Cronin

Anthony Cronin

Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

rounded on 'commitment' in poetry. The voice of the authentic ‘Painting Animal’ was heard from Swift’s working colleague Michael Andrews

Michael Andrews (artist)

and (out of the ‘dangerous European stew’) from Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti

and Mason

André Masson

, while Bomberg

David Bomberg

(still an unfashionable ghost) made a disarming case for drawing as ‘Democracy’s visual sign’. X gave Sisson

C. H. Sisson

Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

his first real exposure and Kavanagh

Patrick Kavanagh

, among other mavericks his full head... Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry

Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...

, scarcely known in Britain as a poet, sang hauntingly of the drunk man's bathos... Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith

performed at her most unnerving. The purpose behind the whole operation was to nurture the 'anarchic volatile centre' of creativity in the arts and to promote 'the unknown and neglected or the known and dishonoured'."

John McGahern
John McGahern
John McGahern was one of the most important Irish authors of the latter half of the twentieth century. Before his death in 2006 he was hailed as "the greatest living Irish novelist" by The Observer.-Life:...

: "I wrote a first novel with a pretentious title, The End or Beginning of Love. A friend was interested in it, Jimmy Swift, who was also responsible for getting Patrick Kavanagh into print at the time, liked it and sent it to his brother, Patrick Swift, who was editing a magazine called X in London with the poet David Wright. They liked it and published an extract. That was my first time in print. The magazine was influential, though, like most magazines of the kind, it was short lived. Many painters, like Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, Michael Andrews, wrote for the magazine. I met these people when the magazine invited me to London . I was in my early twenties. I had very little experience of the world and found the bohemian lives around Soho fairly alarming. The extract in X attracted interest from a number of publishers. Fabers, among other publishers, wrote to me. T. S. Eliot was working at the firm then.”

Martin Green

Martin Green (author)

Martin Green is an English-born writer, editor and publisher.-Background:Born in Stockport, England, Green was schooled at A. S. Neill's Summerhill, while his parents fought in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.Preston, Paul Doves of war: four women of Spain. Harper Collins,...

(writer, editor and publisher), The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

, 1994. “[X] promoted the work of then unfashionable writers and poets, including Stevie Smith, Hugh MacDiarmid, Patrick Kavanagh and Malcolm Lowry, and discussed the work of similarly unfashionable artists - Alberto Giacometti, Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach and David Bomberg". Martin green was the first to publish a collection of Patrick Kavanagh’s poems on the suggestion of Patrick Swift and Anthony Cronin.

Christopher Barker (son of George Barker and Elizabeth Smart

Elizabeth Smart (author)

Elizabeth Smart was a Canadian poet and novelist. Her book, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, detailed her romance with the poet George Barker...

, who lived upstairs from Swift), The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, 2006:“On many occasions through the early Sixties, writers and painters such as David Gascoyne, Paddy Kavanagh, Roberts MacBryde

Robert MacBryde

and Colquhoun

Robert Colquhoun

Robert Colquhoun was a Scottish painter, printmaker and theatre set designer.Colquhoun was born in Kilmarnock and was educated at Kilmarnock Academy...

and Paddy Swift would gather at Westbourne Terrace in Paddington, our family home at that time. They came for editorial discussions about their poetry magazine, X." Elizabeth Smart: "The editors of X magazine, Patrick Swift and David Wright, would meet at her flat in the beginning of the sixties to do interviews, and Elizabeth sometimes offered her drawing room as a sort of office where they would hammer out their editorials. The artist Craigie Aitchison

Craigie Aitchison (painter)

recalled being interviewed there by Paddy Swift, and Elizabeth wrote their words down, including the bits from the pub where they adjourned afterwards..."

The Editors

Patrick Swift was an Irish painter. David Wright a South African-born poet. They met in London in 1953 in the small bar of the Duke of Wellington at the corner of Wardour and Old Compton Street. This was then the favoured rendezvous of the artistic set of poets and painters that made up Soho society. It was at this point that Swift and Wright first discussed the idea of creating a new literary magazine, a quarterly which would publish writing on artistic issues they felt to be of importance. David Wright:

I met Swift in (to quote his words) 'the bohemian jungle of Soho, where practitioners of arts and letters were thick on the ground, though not professors of these activities'. And in a sense X was born in that Bohemian jungle, a society which, as I now realize, was as extraordinary as it was short-lived.

David Wright had worked for the Sunday Times and been editor of Nimbus

Nimbus (literary magazine)

Nimbus, "A Magazine of Literature, the Arts, and New Ideas", was a literary magazine co-founded in London in 1951 by Martin Green and Tristram Hull.- History :...

for a period. Swift had contributed to Nimbus as well as Irish art periodicals, Envoy

Envoy, A Review of Literature and Art

December 1949- July 1951. Dublin, Ireland. Editor & Founder: John RyanDuring its brief existence, Envoy, A Review of Literature and Art, published the work of a broad range of writers, Irish and others. The first to publish J. P...

and The Bell

The Bell (magazine)

The Bell Magazine Dublin, Ireland. A monthly magazine of literature and social comment which had a seminal influence on a generation of Irish intellectuals.- History :...

X: Volume One, Number One - Volume Two, Number Three

Volume One, Number One, November 1959

George Barker
George Barker (poet)
George Granville Barker was an English poet and author.-Life and work:Barker was born in Loughton, near Epping Forest in Essex, England, elder brother of Kit Barker [painter] George Barker was raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school...

Circular from America
Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

The Notion of Commitment
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...

Two Poems
Frank Auerbach
Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach is a painter born in Germany although he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947.-Biography:Auerbach was born in Berlin, the son of Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist...

Fragments from a Conversation
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

L’Image
Robert Pinget
Robert Pinget
Robert Pinget was a major avant-garde French writer, born in Switzerland, who wrote several novels and other prose pieces that drew comparison to Beckett and other major Modernist writers...

Simultaneously
Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger...

Two Poems
Martin Gerard Is Your Novel Really Necessary?
Stevie Smith
Stevie Smith
Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith was an English poet and novelist.-Life:Stevie Smith, born Florence Margaret Smith in Kingston upon Hull, was the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith. Contemporary Women Poets...

Two Poems
Ghika
Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas
Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas was a leading Greek painter, sculptor, engraver, iconographer, writer and academic...

Contemporary Relations between Painting, Sculpture, Architecture.
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti
Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draughtsman, and printmaker.Alberto Giacometti was born in the canton Graubünden's southerly alpine valley Val Bregaglia and came from an artistic background; his father, Giovanni, was a well-known post-Impressionist painter...

The Dream, the Sphinx, and the Death of T.
René Daumal
René Daumal
René Daumal was a French spiritual para-surrealist writer and poet. He was born in Boulzicourt, Ardennes, France....

A Fundamental Experiment
David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

Remembering the Dead

Reproductions of paintings by Frank Auerbach, and a drawing by Alberto Giacometti.
Volume One, Number Two, March 1960

Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

R.M.S. Titanic
George Barker
George Barker (poet)
George Granville Barker was an English poet and author.-Life and work:Barker was born in Loughton, near Epping Forest in Essex, England, elder brother of Kit Barker [painter] George Barker was raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school...

How to Refuse a Heavenly House
Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...

November Days
Michel St. Denis
Michel Saint-Denis
Michel Saint-Denis , dit Jacques Duchesne, was a French actor, theater director, and drama theorist whose ideas on actor training have had a profound influence on the development of European theater from the 1930s on.Michel Saint-Denis was born in Beauvais, France, the nephew of Jacques Copeau, who...

Remembering Two Friends (Matthew Smith
Matthew Smith (artist)
Sir Matthew Smith was a British painter of nudes, still-life and landscape.-Biography:Matthew Arnold Bracy Smith was born on 22 October 1879 in Halifax, the son of a wire-manufacturer...

and Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...

)
Martin Gerard Goodbye to All That: A Child's Guide to Two Decades
Mary Hutchinson Kaleidoscope of Childhood
Charles-Albert Cingria Green Wood and Dry
Michael Andrews
Michael Andrews (artist)
Michael Andrews was a British painter.-Life and work:Michael Andrews was born in Norwich, England, the second child of Thomas Victor Andrews and his wife Gertrude Emma Green. He completed his two years' National service between 1947 and 1949, nineteen months of which was spent in Egypt...

Notes and Preoccupations
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...

Lettre de Voyage
Poets on Poetry: I
- Hugh MacDiarmid
  Hugh MacDiarmid
  Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...
- Vernon Watkins
  Vernon Watkins
  Vernon Phillips Watkins , was a British poet, and a translator and painter. He was a close friend of Dylan Thomas, who described him as "the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English"....
- Patrick Kavanagh
  Patrick Kavanagh
  Patrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger...
- Stevie Smith
  Stevie Smith
  Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith was an English poet and novelist.-Life:Stevie Smith, born Florence Margaret Smith in Kingston upon Hull, was the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith. Contemporary Women Poets...

Reproductions of drawings by Michael Andrews
Michael Andrews (artist)
Michael Andrews was a British painter.-Life and work:Michael Andrews was born in Norwich, England, the second child of Thomas Victor Andrews and his wife Gertrude Emma Green. He completed his two years' National service between 1947 and 1949, nineteen months of which was spent in Egypt...

, Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...

, and Auberjonois, and of a painting by Michael Andrews.
Volume One, Number Three, June 1960

Brian Higgins
Brian Higgins (poet)
Brian Higgins Poet, mathematician and professional rugby player.‘Born at Batley in 1930, bored at Bradford in 1940, in 1950 he had an affair with the gamma function. He was educated in 1960 at the "York Minster", Soho.’...

Five Poems; and Two Poems
Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

November 5th Address
Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger...

The Flying Moment
David Bomberg
David Bomberg
David Garshen Bomberg was an English painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.Bomberg was one of the most audacious of the exceptional generation of artists who studied at the Slade School of Art under Henry Tonks, and which included Mark Gertler, Stanley Spencer, C.R.W. Nevinson and Dora Carrington...

The Bomberg Papers
H.A. Gomperts Hunting to Live
André Masson
André Masson
André-Aimé-René Masson was a French artist.-Biography:Masson was born in Balagny-sur-Thérain, Oise, but was brought up in Belgium. He began his study of art at the age of eleven in Brussels, at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts under the guidance of Constant Montald, and later he studied in Paris...

Dissonances
Marie Riefstahl-Nordlinger On Reading 'Marcel Proust - a Biography

George Barker
George Barker (poet)
George Granville Barker was an English poet and author.-Life and work:Barker was born in Loughton, near Epping Forest in Essex, England, elder brother of Kit Barker [painter] George Barker was raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school...

VIII Beatitudes to Denver

Patrick Swift
Patrick Swift
Patrick Swift was an artist born in Dublin, Ireland. Patrick Swift was a painter and key cultural figure in Dublin and London before moving to the Algarve in southern Portugal, where he is buried in the town of Porches...

Prolegomenon to George Barker

David Wright
David Wright (poet)
David John Murray Wright was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet".-Biography:Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing....

Adam at Evening

Poets on Poetry: II

Jules Supervielle
Jules Supervielle
Jules Supervielle was a French poet and writer born in Uruguay.Jules Supervielle always kept away from Surrealism which was dominant in the first half of the twentieth century...

Yves Bonnefoy
Yves Bonnefoy
Yves Bonnefoy is a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher....

Henri Thomas
Henri Thomas
Henri Thomas was a French writer and poet.-Life:Henri Thomas was born in 1912 and grew up in the Alsace/Lorraine region of France. He moved to Paris to attend the prestigious Henri IV high school, working with the noted essayist Alain...

Philippe Jaccottet
Philippe Jaccottet
Philippe Jaccottet is a poet and translator who publishes in French.After completing his studies in Lausanne, he lived several years in Paris. In 1953, came to live in the town of Grignan in Provence...

A letter from Derek Hill

Reproductions of paintings by David Bomberg

David Bomberg

and drawings by André Masson

André Masson

.
Volume One, Number Four, October 1960

Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

Conversations in Courtship; Verse is a Sword: Unpublished Letters

C. H. Sisson
C. H. Sisson
Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

Six Poems

Charles Marowitz
Charles Marowitz
Charles Marowitz is an American critic, theatre director, and playwright who has been a regular columnist on Swans Commentary—a cultural-political bi-weekly—since 2004...

New Wave in a Dead Sea

Robert Nye
Robert Nye
Robert Nye FRSL is an English poet who has also written novels and plays as well as stories for children. His bestselling novel Falstaff published in 1976 was described by Michael Ratcliffe as 'one of the most ambitious and seductive novels of the decade,' and went on to win both The Hawthornden...

Going to the Dogs

Craigie Atchison
Craigie Aitchison (painter)
Craigie Aitchison, RA, CBE was a Scottish painter. He was known for his many paintings of the Crucifixion, one of which hangs behind the altar in the chapter house of Liverpool Cathedral.-Education:...

Fragments from a Conversation; Three Paintings

Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

A Question Of Modernity

Lucian Freud
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud, OM, CH was a British painter. Known chiefly for his thickly impasted portrait and figure paintings, he was widely considered the pre-eminent British artist of his time...

Two Paintings

C. H. Sisson
C. H. Sisson
Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

Christopher Homm's Sunday Dinner

Noel Stock The Serious Artist

James Mahon
Patrick Swift
Patrick Swift was an artist born in Dublin, Ireland. Patrick Swift was a painter and key cultural figure in Dublin and London before moving to the Algarve in southern Portugal, where he is buried in the town of Porches...

The Painter in the Press

O. V. de L. Milosz
Oscar Milosz
Oscar Vladislas de Lubicz Milosz was a French-Lithuanian writer and representative of Lithuania at the League of Nations. His literary work was concerned with symbols and associations. A recluse, his poems were vibrant and tormented, concerned with love, loneliness and anger. Milosz was primarily...

The Hymn of Understanding

Martin Gerard Molloy becomes Unnamable

Robert Pinget
Robert Pinget
Robert Pinget was a major avant-garde French writer, born in Switzerland, who wrote several novels and other prose pieces that drew comparison to Beckett and other major Modernist writers...

Le jardin le recyclé

George D. Painter
George Painter
George Duncan Painter, OBE known as George D. Painter, was an English author most famous as a biographer of Marcel Proust....

A Reply to Mme Riefstahl-Nordlinger

On the Margin

Volume Two, Number One, March 1961

A Foreword to Volume Two

William Paton The Profession of Letters or Down with Culture

Claire McAllister Defence and Admonition

Malcolm Quantrill Death of an Opportunity

George Barker
George Barker (poet)
George Granville Barker was an English poet and author.-Life and work:Barker was born in Loughton, near Epping Forest in Essex, England, elder brother of Kit Barker [painter] George Barker was raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school...

III Roman Odes

Helen Lessore A Note on the Development of Francis Bacon's Painting

Francis Bacon Seven Paintings

C. H. Sisson
C. H. Sisson
Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

Natural History

Geoffrey Hill
Geoffrey Hill
Geoffrey Hill is an English poet, professor emeritus of English literature and religion, and former co-director of the Editorial Institute, at Boston University. Hill has been considered to be among the most distinguished poets of his generation...

Two Sonnets

John McGahern
John McGahern
John McGahern was one of the most important Irish authors of the latter half of the twentieth century. Before his death in 2006 he was hailed as "the greatest living Irish novelist" by The Observer.-Life:...

The End or the Beginning of Love

Dannie Abse
Dannie Abse
Daniel Abse, better known as Dannie Abse , is a Welsh poet.-Early years:Abse was born in Cardiff, Wales to a Jewish family. He is the younger brother of politician and reformer Leo Abse and the eminent psychoanalyst, Wilfred Abse...

The Magician

H. A. Gomperts Hunting to Live: II

Robert Nye
Robert Nye
Robert Nye FRSL is an English poet who has also written novels and plays as well as stories for children. His bestselling novel Falstaff published in 1976 was described by Michael Ratcliffe as 'one of the most ambitious and seductive novels of the decade,' and went on to win both The Hawthornden...

Perseus in Philistia

Miranda Rothschild Two Poems

Geoffrey Hazard The Last Quarter Brings the Cold

Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

Getting Wurred In

Stevie Smith
Stevie Smith
Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith was an English poet and novelist.-Life:Stevie Smith, born Florence Margaret Smith in Kingston upon Hull, was the second daughter of Ethel and Charles Smith. Contemporary Women Poets...

Three Poems

Vernon Watkins
Vernon Watkins
Vernon Phillips Watkins , was a British poet, and a translator and painter. He was a close friend of Dylan Thomas, who described him as "the most profound and greatly accomplished Welshman writing poems in English"....

Poem for Conrad

A letter from Robert Hardy
Robert Hardy
Timothy Sydney Robert Hardy, CBE, FSA is an English actor with a long career in the theatre, film and television. He is also an acknowledged expert on the longbow.-Early life:...

On the Margin

Paintings by Francis Bacon.
Volume Two, Number Two, August 1961

Malcolm Lowry
Malcolm Lowry
Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...

Four Poems

Art and Morality:
- George Barker
  George Barker (poet)
  George Granville Barker was an English poet and author.-Life and work:Barker was born in Loughton, near Epping Forest in Essex, England, elder brother of Kit Barker [painter] George Barker was raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school...
  
  The Hyppogryph and the Water-Pistol
- James Mahon
  Patrick Swift
  Patrick Swift was an artist born in Dublin, Ireland. Patrick Swift was a painter and key cultural figure in Dublin and London before moving to the Algarve in southern Portugal, where he is buried in the town of Porches...
  
  Mob Morals and the Art of Loving Art
- Martin Gerard It Means What It Says
- C. H. Sisson
  C. H. Sisson
  Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...
  
  Leisure and the Arts
- Patrick Kavanagh
  Patrick Kavanagh
  Patrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger...
  
  On a Liberal Education

John Heath-Stubbs
John Heath-Stubbs
John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs OBE was an English poet and translator, known for his verse influenced by classical myths, and the long Arthurian poem Artorius .- Biography :...

Use of Personal Pronouns: A Lesson in English Grammar

Brian Higgins
Brian Higgins (poet)
Brian Higgins Poet, mathematician and professional rugby player.‘Born at Batley in 1930, bored at Bradford in 1940, in 1950 he had an affair with the gamma function. He was educated in 1960 at the "York Minster", Soho.’...

Four Poems; Sit Thi Dahn Pat Cuddy

Philip Martin Affiche; Four Paintings

Georges Duthuit Can the Image be Abolished?

Noel Stock Danger: Biographers at Work

Timothy Behrens
Timothy Behrens
Timothy Behrens is a British painter resident in Spain.Behrens was a student at the Slade School of Fine Art and formed part of the tightly knit group of artists and intellectuals who frequented the Colony Room , the infamous Soho drinking club where Lucian Freud and...

Two Paintings

David Wright
David Wright (poet)
David John Murray Wright was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet".-Biography:Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing....

A Vision

James Lovell Alive, Alive O!

Ghika
Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas
Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas was a leading Greek painter, sculptor, engraver, iconographer, writer and academic...

A Pine Tree; The Innermost Flesh of Vital Space

Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

Two Poems

J.C. Ashby
Cliff Ashby (poet)
Cliff Ashby Probably the most powerful, spare poet of his generation; recognition of his genius cannot be much longer delayed.- Guide to World Literatue, 1975...

Two Poems

On the Margin

Volume Two, Number Three, July 1962

Martin Seymour-Smith
Martin Seymour-Smith
Martin Roger Seymour-Smith was a British poet, literary critic, biographer and astrologer.Seymour-Smith was born in London and educated at Oxford University where he was editor of Isis...

Six Poems; C.H. Sisson

An Editorial

George Barker
George Barker (poet)
George Granville Barker was an English poet and author.-Life and work:Barker was born in Loughton, near Epping Forest in Essex, England, elder brother of Kit Barker [painter] George Barker was raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school...

On a Distant Prospect of English Poetry & Downing College

William Clarke Four Poems

Patrick Swift
Patrick Swift
Patrick Swift was an artist born in Dublin, Ireland. Patrick Swift was a painter and key cultural figure in Dublin and London before moving to the Algarve in southern Portugal, where he is buried in the town of Porches...

Seven Portraits

C. H. Sisson
C. H. Sisson
Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

Ten Poems

Brian Higgins
Brian Higgins (poet)
Brian Higgins Poet, mathematician and professional rugby player.‘Born at Batley in 1930, bored at Bradford in 1940, in 1950 he had an affair with the gamma function. He was educated in 1960 at the "York Minster", Soho.’...

Six Poems

Martin Green
Martin Green (author)
Martin Green is an English-born writer, editor and publisher.-Background:Born in Stockport, England, Green was schooled at A. S. Neill's Summerhill, while his parents fought in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.Preston, Paul Doves of war: four women of Spain. Harper Collins,...

Coming up for Air

John Heath-Stubbs
John Heath-Stubbs
John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs OBE was an English poet and translator, known for his verse influenced by classical myths, and the long Arthurian poem Artorius .- Biography :...

Tantum Religio...

John Fairfax The City

Christopher Humble Two Poems

J.C. Ashby
Cliff Ashby (poet)
Cliff Ashby Probably the most powerful, spare poet of his generation; recognition of his genius cannot be much longer delayed.- Guide to World Literatue, 1975...

Three Poems

Dom Moraes
Dom Moraes
Dominic Francis Moraes , popularly known as Dom Moraes, was a Goan writer, poet and columnist. He published nearly 30 books.-Early life:...

Myth One

Howard Griffin Delphi

Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger...

The Cattle Fair; Mermaid Tavern

Thomas Blackburn Two Poems

Aidan Higgins
Aidan Higgins
-Life:His upbringing in a landed Catholic family in Celbridge, County Kildare, Ireland, provided material for his first experimental novel, Langrishe, Go Down...

Langrishe, Go Down

Nathaniel Tarn
Nathaniel Tarn
Nathaniel Tarn is an American poet, essayist, anthropologist, and translator. He was born to a French mother and a British father. He lived in Paris until age 7, then in Belgium until age 11.-Education:...

Remembering Benares

David Wright
David Wright (poet)
David John Murray Wright was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet".-Biography:Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing....

Reflections on Love

Walter McElroy The Hunchback

Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid
Hugh MacDiarmid is the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve , a significant Scottish poet of the 20th century. He was instrumental in creating a Scottish version of modernism and was a leading light in the Scottish Renaissance of the 20th century...

From 'The Snares of Varuna
On the Margin

An Anthology from X

Selected by David Wright (Oxford University Press, 1988):

Articles and writings:
Frank Auerbach

Frank Auerbach

(Fragments from a Conversation [with Patrick Swift]), Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

(L'image), Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti

(The Dream, the Sphinx and the Death of T.), André Masson

André Masson

(Dissonances), Michael Andrews

Michael Andrews (artist)

(Notes and Preoccupations), Robert Graves

Robert Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...

(November 5th Address), George Barker

George Barker (poet)

(Circular from America; How to Refuse a Heavenly House), Craigie Atchison

Craigie Aitchison (painter)

(Fragments from a Conversation [with Patrick Swift]), Anthony Cronin

Anthony Cronin

Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

(The Notion of Commitment; Goodbye to All That; A Question of Modernity), David Bomberg

David Bomberg

(The Bomberg Papers [Posthumously: Swift unearthed and edited Bomberg's posthumous papers]), Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid

(Reflections in a Slum), David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne

David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

(Remembering the Dead), Patrick Kavanagh

Patrick Kavanagh

(The Flying Moment; The Cattle Fair), C. H. Sisson

C. H. Sisson

Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

(The Professor of Letters; Natural History), John McGahern

John McGahern

(The End of the Beginning of Love), Martin Seymour-Smith

Martin Seymour-Smith

Martin Roger Seymour-Smith was a British poet, literary critic, biographer and astrologer.Seymour-Smith was born in London and educated at Oxford University where he was editor of Isis...

(C.H. Sisson), Martin Green

Martin Green (author)

(Coming Up for Air), Hugh MacDiarmid

Hugh MacDiarmid

(In Memoriam James Joyce). Art and Morality: Prefatory Note; George Barker (The Hippogryph and the Water-Pistol); Patrick Swift (Mob Morals and the Art of Loving Art); Anthony Cronin (It means What it Says); C.H.Sisson (Leisure and the Arts); Patrick Kavanagh (On a Liberal Education). Poets on Poetry: Hugh MacDiarmid, Vernon Watkins, Patrick Kavanagh, Stevie Smith.

Poems by Stevie Smith

Stevie Smith

, Patrick Kavanagh

Patrick Kavanagh

, Brian Higgins

Brian Higgins (poet)

, David Wright

David Wright (poet)

David John Murray Wright was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet".-Biography:Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing....

, Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...

, C. H. Sisson

C. H. Sisson

Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

, George Barker

George Barker (poet)

, Geoffrey Hill

Geoffrey Hill

, Dannie Abse

Dannie Abse

, Vernon Watkins

Vernon Watkins

, Malcolm Lowry

Malcolm Lowry

Clarence Malcolm Lowry was an English poet and novelist who was best known for his novel Under the Volcano, which was voted No. 11 in the Modern Library 100 Best Novels list.-Biography:...

, John Heath-Stubbs

John Heath-Stubbs

John Francis Alexander Heath-Stubbs OBE was an English poet and translator, known for his verse influenced by classical myths, and the long Arthurian poem Artorius .- Biography :...

, Anthony Cronin

Anthony Cronin

Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

, Cliff Ashby

Cliff Ashby (poet)

Cliff Ashby Probably the most powerful, spare poet of his generation; recognition of his genius cannot be much longer delayed.- Guide to World Literatue, 1975...

, Martin Seymour-Smith

Martin Seymour-Smith

Martin Roger Seymour-Smith was a British poet, literary critic, biographer and astrologer.Seymour-Smith was born in London and educated at Oxford University where he was editor of Isis...

, William Clarke and Thomas Blackburn.

List of Illustrations: Patrick Swift

Patrick Swift

(Portrait of George Barker; C.H.Sisson; David Wright; Patrick Kavanagh), David Bomberg

David Bomberg

(Self-portrait), Michael Andrews

Michael Andrews (artist)

(The Gardener), Frank Auerbach

Frank Auerbach

(Head of E.O.W)), Craigie Atchison

Craigie Aitchison (painter)

(Tree and Wall Landscape).Drawings: Alberto Giacometti

Alberto Giacometti

(Head; plans for 'The Dream, the Sphinx and the Death of T.'), André Masson

André Masson

(Illustrations for 'Dissonances')

Quotes About

David Wright's and Patrick Swift's legendary X set the common agenda for a generation of European painters, writers and dramatists.

-Michael Schmidt

Michael Schmidt (poet)

Michael Schmidt is a Mexican-British poet, author and scholar. He studied at Harvard and at Wadham College, Oxford. He is currently Professor of Poetry at Glasgow University, where he is convener of the Creative Writing M.Litt programme...

(founder of Carcanet Press

Carcanet Press

Carcanet Press is a publisher, primarily of poetry, based in the United Kingdom and founded in 1969 by Michael Schmidt.Carcanet Press is now in its fourth decade. In 2000 it was named the Sunday Times millennium Small Publisher of the Year...

, editor of Poetry Nation Review and Professor of Poetry at the University of Glasgow

University of Glasgow

The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...

, writing in The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, 2006)

A remarkable publication which, in some respects, was light years ahead of its time.

-Brian Fallon

Brian Fallon (critic)

Brian Fallon is one of Ireland's foremost art critics. He was born in 1933 at Cootehill, County Cavan, the second son of the poet Padraic Fallon, and was educated at St Peter’s College, Wexford, and Trinity College, Dublin. He was Chief Critic of The Irish Times for 35 years and its Literary...

(chief art critic to The Irish Times

The Irish Times

The Irish Times is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Kevin O'Sullivan who succeeded Geraldine Kennedy in 2011; the deputy editor is Paul O'Neill. The Irish Times is considered to be Ireland's newspaper of record, and is published every day except Sundays...

for 35 years)

Brilliant but short-lived.

- Cambridge paperback guide to literature in English

X is a magazine dedicated to genius, passion and intelligence. It has the ease and authority of all excellent creations.

- Philip Toynbee

Philip Toynbee

(The Observer

The Observer

; and Time and Tide (magazine)

Time and Tide (magazine)

Time and Tide was a British weekly political and literary review magazine founded by Margaret, Lady Rhondda in 1920. It started out as a supporter of left wing and feminist causes and the mouthpiece of the feminist Six Point Group. It later moved to the right along with the views of its owner...

)

We were out to provide a platform for the individual vision, not accepted avant-gardisme or second-hand attitudes.

- David Wright, writing in Poetry Nation

The purpose behind the whole operation was to nurture the 'anarchic volatile centre' of creativity in the arts and to promote 'the unknown and neglected or the known and dishonoured'.

- CJ Fox (Canadian journalist and critic)

Additional reading

An Anthology from X, selected by David Wright (Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-19-212266-5)
The British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...

has hardcover collections of Volume One & Volume Two (search under: 'X. A Quarterly Review etc.'http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&scp.scps=scope%3A(BLCONTENT)&frbg=&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1314800129481&srt=rank&ct=search&mode=Basic&dum=true&indx=1&tb=t&vl(freeText0)=x.%20a%20quarterly%20review%20etc.&fn=search&vid=BLVU1)
X, Volume 1 Numbers 1-4, November 1959-October 1960, Barrie & Rockliff 1961, limited to 800 copies, Hardcover. With contributions by Samuel Beckett, George Barker, David Gascoyne, Robert Graves, Patrick Kavanagh, Hugh Macdiarmid, Ezra Pound & others, with reproductions of paintings by Lucian Freud, Frank Auerbach, David Bomberg, Alberto Giacometti & others.
David Wright Obituary in The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-david-wright-1446202.html
David Wright in and interview with Poetry Nation http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=5973
Lilly Library, Indian University , has many of the ‘X magazine' files http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/lilly/mss/html/x.html
Fourteen Letters (to David Wright), C.H. Sisson,This article is taken from PN Review 39, Volume 11 Number 1, July - August 1984.http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=6431
RTÉ Radio. John McGahern and Patrick Swift by Denis Sampson. Recorded Sunday, March 29, 2009. Go to minute 46:54 http://www.rte.ie/radio1/sundaymiscellany/1267307.html
Frank Auerbach
Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach is a painter born in Germany although he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947.-Biography:Auerbach was born in Berlin, the son of Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist...

, Robert Hughes
Robert Hughes (critic)
Robert Studley Forrest Hughes, AO is an Australian-born art critic, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970.-Early life:...

, Thames and Hudson (1990; 92)
The Collected Poems of Elizabeth Smart, David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne
David Gascoyne was an English poet associated with the Surrealist movement.-Early life and Surrealism:...

(ed.), (Paladin, London, 1992)
By Heart, Elizabeth Smart - A Life, Rosemary Sullivan, p.274, Flamingo, London, 1992
Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in Cork on Patrick Swift http://www.crawfordartgallery.ie/PressArchive/patrick_swift.html
Link to image of Swift's portrait of David. Mentions they first met in London in 1953 http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/patrick-swift-1927-1983-1-c-dv3nhs28k3
Patrick Swift on David Wright, PN Review 14, Volume 6 Number 6, July - August 1980.http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=7587
Patrick Swift 1927-83 (ISBN 0-946641-37-4), Gandon Editions, 1993; with contributions on Swift by George Barker
George Barker (poet)
George Granville Barker was an English poet and author.-Life and work:Barker was born in Loughton, near Epping Forest in Essex, England, elder brother of Kit Barker [painter] George Barker was raised by his Irish mother and English father in Battersea, London. He was educated at an L.C.C. school...

, Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

, Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh
Patrick Kavanagh was an Irish poet and novelist. Regarded as one of the foremost poets of the 20th century, his best known works include the novel Tarry Flynn and the poems Raglan Road and The Great Hunger...

, John McGahern
John McGahern
John McGahern was one of the most important Irish authors of the latter half of the twentieth century. Before his death in 2006 he was hailed as "the greatest living Irish novelist" by The Observer.-Life:...

, Brian Higgins
Brian Higgins (poet)
Brian Higgins Poet, mathematician and professional rugby player.‘Born at Batley in 1930, bored at Bradford in 1940, in 1950 he had an affair with the gamma function. He was educated in 1960 at the "York Minster", Soho.’...

, C. H. Sisson
C. H. Sisson
Charles Hubert Sisson CH was a British writer, best known as a poet and translator.-Life:...

, Katherine Swift
Katherine Swift (artist)
Katherine Swift was a painter, illustrator and ceramicist.- Biography :Family: Katherine was the first child of Patrick Swift and Oonagh Ryan. Her uncle was the artist John Ryan; Her aunt the film actress Kathleen Ryan. Born Dublin: Katherine was born in Dublin in 1956...

, David Wright
David Wright (poet)
David John Murray Wright was an author and "an acclaimed South African-born poet".-Biography:Wright was born in Johannesburg, South Africa 23 February 1920 of normal hearing....

, Martin Green (author)
Martin Green (author)
Martin Green is an English-born writer, editor and publisher.-Background:Born in Stockport, England, Green was schooled at A. S. Neill's Summerhill, while his parents fought in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War.Preston, Paul Doves of war: four women of Spain. Harper Collins,...

, et al.
CH Sisson on THE STAMP OF LIFE by Anthony Cronin, Collected Poems 1950-1973, PN Review 11, Volume 6 Number 3, January - February 1980.http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=7698
Cliff Ashby, PN Review 14, Volume 6 Number 6, July - August 1980. http://www.pnreview.co.uk/cgi-bin/scribe?item_id=7603
Dead as Doornails, Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin
Anthony Cronin is an Irish poet. He received the Marten Toonder Award for his contribution to Irish literature....

(Dublin, Dolmen Press, 1976)
Isola di Rifiuti http://isola-di-rifiuti.blogspot.com/2010/02/patrick-swift.html
Travel Books by Wright & Swift http://patrickswifttravelbooks.blogspot.com/search/label/Travel%20Books%20Home%20Page
Patrick Swift images: http://painterpatrickswift.blogspot.com/

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