Chris Torrance
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Chris Torrance (born 1941) is a poet and musician associated with the British Poetry Revival.
Born in Edinburgh, Torrance grew up in London and moved to rural Wales in 1970. He has been teaching creative writing at the Cardiff University since 1976. He performs literary cabaret with the poetry and music group Poetheat, which he co-founded in 1985 and which is now called Heat Poets.
Torrance is a self-styled 'hippie' and his work shows the influence of the Beats, especially Gary Snyder and an interest in the matter and monuments of ancient Britain, including such 'magical' or religious phenomena as ley lines. He has also expressed an admiration for the writings of Charles Olson and David Jones.
Torrance has featured in a number of key Revival anthologies, including Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain (1969), Conductors of Chaos (1996) and Other: British and Irish Poetry since 1970 (1999). His major work is the ongoing Magic Door sequence, of which seven books have been published to date.
Selected publications
- Green Orange Purple Red (1968)
- Aries under Saturn and Beyond Acrospirical Meanderings in a Tongue of Time (1969)
- The Magic Door (1975)
- Mirages (1975)
- The Florentine Sonnets (1976)
- Citrinas (The Magic Door, Book 2) (1977)
- The Rainbringer (1977)
- Heat Sonnets (1979)
- The Diary of Palug's Cat (The Magic Door, Book 3) (1980)
- The Book of Brychan (The Magic Door, Book 4) (1982)
- Cylinder Fragments of the Twentieth Century (1982)
- The Slim Book/Wet Pulp (The Magic Door, Book. 5) (1986)
- Southerly Vector/The Book Of Heat - Further Books of the Magic Door (1996)
External link
Chris Torrance at the Strange Attractor Web site (http://www.strange-attractor.co.uk/chrisbio.htm)