music.wikisort.org - Poet

John Birtwhistle (born 1946) is an English poet published by Carcanet Press.[1] His libretto for David Blake’s opera The Plumber’s Gift (1989) was staged by English National Opera at the London Coliseum and broadcast on BBC Radio 3.[2]

John Birtwhistle
Born	John Birtwhistle (1946-06-28)28 June 1946 Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, England
Notable work	The Plumber's Gift Eventualities In The Event

Career

Birtwhistle won an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 1975.[3] His poetry has been recognized by an Arts Council bursary, an Arts Council creative writing fellowship (1976–78), a writing fellowship at the University of Southampton (1978–80) and a Poetry Book Society recommendation for Our Worst Suspicions (1985).

Birtwhistle has had three concert libretti set and performed.[4] Some of his early poems were translated by Ștefan Augustin Doinaș and published in Romanian.[5] His 1996 libretto for The Fabulous Adventures of Alexander the Great by composer David Blake was translated into Greek.[4]^: 2

From 1980 to 1992, Birtwhistle was a Lecturer in English at the University of York, teaching mainly the seventeenth century and Romantic periods.[1] He has written on Goethe’s Italian Journey[6] and on Humphry Davy.[7] He has edited and annotated John Clare's essay Popularity in Authorship.[8] From 2012 to 2017, he was a literary contributor and eventually an Associate Editor of the quarterly BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care.[1] Birtwhistle is married to a Consultant Anaesthetist and since 1992 he has lived in Sheffield with his family.[1]

Critical reception

Birtwhistle has been described by Ian Hughes as a "master craftsman."[9] Dick Davis wrote that Birtwhistle’s poems “celebrate the vulnerable and immediate.”[10] Dennis O’Driscoll commented in Hibernia that "a sweeping imagination ranges over past and future, pastoral and urban themes" and John Heath-Stubbs described Birtwhistle as "an ambitious and original poet, not afraid to take chances", singling out a group of poems on Connemara as "altogether admirable for their exact and loving observation."[11] Peter Jay wrote that Birtwhistle "produces a dazzling array of poems on a range of historical, political and personal subjects. These lucid, witty, tender poems, by turns serious and comic, are full of felicitous surprises and unexpected turns of imagination."[12]

Bibliography

• The Conversion to Oil of the Lots Road London Transport Power Station, and Other Poems (London: Anvil Press Poetry in association with Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972) ISBN 0-900977-36-1
• Vision of Wat Tyler (With etchings and calligraphy by Graham Clarke. Boughton Monchelsea, Kent: Ebenezer Press, 1972) ISBN 0950235709
• Haysaving: a Connemara Journal (Maidstone/Boughton Monchelsea, Kent: Trembling Hand Press/Ebenezer Press, 1975) ISBN 0-905038-00-2
• Tidal Models (London: Anvil Press Poetry in association with Rex Collings, 1980) ISBN 0-85646-052-4[13]
• Our Worst Suspicions (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1985) ISBN 0-85646-131-8.
• The Plumber's Gift. Opera in Two Acts (Libretto for music by David Blake. London: Novello, 1988)
• A Selection of Poems (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 1989) ISBN 0-85646-215-2
• The Griffin's Tale. Legend for Baritone and Orchestra (Libretto for music by David Blake. York: University of York Music Press, 1994) ISMN M570200771
• The Fabulous Adventures of Alexander the Great (Libretto for music by David Blake. York: University of York Music Press, 1996) ISMN 570200733
• Rings of Jade. Poems from the Prison Diaries of Ho Chi Minh (Song cycle for music for medium voice and orchestra by David Blake. York: University of York Music Press, 2005) ISMN M570208357
• A Swallow (Song for soprano set by David Blake. York: University of York Music Press, 2008) ISMN M570360437; David Blake, Songs and Epigrams for Voice and Piano (York: University of York Music Press, 2016) ASIN B07WR3B82C
• Eventualities (London: Anvil Press Poetry, 2013) ISBN 978-0-85646-451-5
• In the Event (Manchester: Carcanet Press, 2020) ISBN 978-1-78410-993-6

References

External links

• John Birtwhistle reads his poem about Joseph Wright's portrait of John Whitehurst (video)
• Text and discussion (for Broomhill Festival 2020) of five poems from In The Event
• Poems after Ritsos and Bede, from Our Worst Suspicions
• Extract from introduction to ‘Change of Domicile’ by Clive James, in BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care
• John Birtwhistle on WorldCat

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